It’s been nearly fourteen years since we met David Lewis. David is a man of great depth and many talents. He’s a terrific gardener, a licensed Landscape Architect, and a truly gifted chef. He’s among a very few people who are capable of developing a vision and inspiring the people around him to bring that vision to fruition in hi-res detail. I’m very glad to be one of the people David inspires. We have learned a lot from him over the years. It is our tremendously good fortune to have had David as a friend, client, and collaborator.

Three years ago, David launched Brick House Kitchen, a restaurant and catering business in South Fayetteville. parkco worked with him and John Walters, a terrific contractor, to design and renovate an old and poorly utilized house in a part of town that wouldn’t generally be considered picturesque. The house became a warm and intimate restaurant, just a fantastic place with absolutely the best food I’ve ever had. I’m not exaggerating when I tell people that a meal at Brick House Kitchen will change you for the better.



David emphasizes integrity and authenticity in the food he serves. He cultivates seasonal menus from local resources including his on-site gardens around the Brick House. It is an incredible experience and the place is an island of culinary and agricultural beauty in an unlikely environment. It’s an example of what can be. It’s proof that a dilapidated rent house surrounded by parking lots can become something deeply meaningful and beautiful. We are extremely proud to have been a part of this project.



We’re super excited about our latest opportunity to work with David. Brick House Kafe’ is opening soon inside Nightbird Books on Dickson Street in Fayetteville. It so happens that Nightbird is owned by another dear friend, Lisa Sharp. Nightbird Books has the distinction of being Fayetteville’s most outstanding independent local bookstore. Nightbird attracts nationally acclaimed authors for readings. It’s also a place in Fayetteville to go with the expectation that you’ll see people you know. This is the confluence of two incredible local businesses. It’s going to be great. I can’t wait until it’s open. A new book, perfect cappuccino, a tasty thing to eat, and a comfy chair to enjoy it all in one place, what’s not to love?


Future home of BHK at Nightbird Books

We’re thrilled that David asked parkco to design the Brick House Kafe’ at Nightbird Books. Planning is complete. We’re developing the architectural details now. We’ve defined the locations for graphics business identity and we’ve nearly finalized the lighting design. The old floor tile is gone and the slab is ready to be finished. Construction will begin very soon with our old friend, John Walters running the show once again. I’ll make blog posts at major points along this process. In the meantime, watch our parkco facebook page for incremental updates.

So, we’re on facebook. Don’t know exactly what to think of that or what to do with that opportunity, but we’ll try to make the most of it.

More on this soon!

UPDATE: What can be said about this facebook phenomenon? There are a lot of things that I don’t like about it, but I’m confident that the good outweighs the bad. For parkco architects, it has been a good thing for sure. This blog, as you can tell from my very sporadic updates, is not especially convenient to maintain. It takes a lot of effort to compose a blog post and publish it. That effort tends to deter me from making quick little updates. I feel that I need to have something really important to share so that it justifies the time and energy to do it. Facebook is easy. I can post photos and quick thoughts effortlessly. I also have direct contact with the people who like our page. It has become the quick blog that I’ve always wanted. The friends that we have following us on facebook don’t have to subscribe to an rss feed to be updated. That’s all automatic in facebook. Check us out. If you find us interesting, click the ‘like’ button. I don’t post junk. I try to make all updates relevant to our practice and interesting to the people keeping an eye on us. If you like us on facebook, I’ll send you a personal thank you message - We sincerely appreciate it.

A quote from Joe Birmingham, our builder on the Cabarn Project, from December 12, 2009. His text message to the client follows:

“We are finishing the paint. I can't describe the view.
Looking out the windows, the sun is radiating
through the south windows close to 100 degrees
(just a guess). We ran the heat pump but it went off on
short order. This place is very nice.”

Makes me want to get out there. New photos of the project coming soon!

So, I think, “Yeah, I’ll have a blog and post stuff to it about once a week or maybe once a month. It’ll be fun and somewhat interesting to people who want to keep up with the kids at parkco.” It’s been six months since my last post - shame on me.

We have had lots going on though. The Temple Shalom Project has finished and the grand opening is on December 12. The house on Skyline is complete and its residents are residing there comfortably. Our Nunk Pro Tunk clients are vectoring toward completion and their historical remodel is a knockout. First Baptist of Farmington is done and things are great, lots of fun stuff happening there (need photos!). Our beloved Cabarn project is almost complete - I’ve got to get out to Rush to see it soon.

We have new projects on the boards and they are exciting. We’re working on an animal shelter, a handful of residential projects, and a very exciting project that isn’t 100% in the bag yet...fingers crossed!

I have committed myself to reorganizing the website. I want to have projects by name with descriptions of each project. I also want to categorize these projects by type. It will be an enormous undertaking, but it will allow us to have much easier navigation and a better organized site.

Look for new images soon too. We are once again resolving to have new work documented in the late winter and early spring.

Thanks for staying in touch! I promise more posts soon. I hope you’ll email us so we’ll know you’re out there! We love to hear from people who discover our site.

See you soon,
Bret

This is a slideshow of a terrific project for some terrific people. The Baker’s took these photos at interesting points along the construction. Watch a non-descript ranch transform into a modern craftsman in fifteen easy steps!

We’ve added a new page under the ‘more’ category. Area 51 is a repository for anything that can’t find a home elsewhere. It may be my favorite part of the whole site. Check it out. Email me if you have questions about something you see there.

We have some of our best work under construction right now. It’s amazing to see all of the time and energy of design work getting built at once.

Temple shalom is underway and looking great. We have been very hands-on with this project, and I’m proud of the way things are shaping up. The stone masonry is beautiful. I’m going to dedicate a post to the mason’s work soon. In the meantime, I’ll say that it’s an honor to have such beautiful craftsmanship on our design. Otherwise, the sheetrock work is almost done. This one is getting close! Construction photos here.

We’ve had a terrific project underway for a while, but construction has just begun. We’ve dubbed it ‘The Cabarn,’ a contraction of cabin and barn. It’s a passive-solar design that utilizes sip-panel construction. Very cool and lots of fun.

We have a mountainside home under construction too. It overlooks the city and we’re thrilled with how it’s coming together. I’ll have more construction photos of Skyline soon.

I am not a good photographer. It's okay, really. As a result, I get a pile of bad photos and maybe a few that look okay. Stephen is much better than I am. Between the two of us, we've amassed 1000+ photos of three houses so far this summer. We're sorting right now, and I hope to have some new images up very soon.

The good news is that the projects we've photographed so far look great. It's always a treat to see our clients at home, moved in and settled, and enjoying themselves.

We'll post an update here when we get more images up. I need to do some reformatting too.

This is a “Coming Attractions” post. Lately, I’ve been thinking about new blog posts and that has led to new ways to use the blog. I’d sincerely love to hear any of your comments or requests for topics. So if I’ve mentioned anything here that sounds interesting, or if you have an idea for a post, please drop me an email or post a comment.

Project Profiles: Our documentation of our work is nothing to brag about, but we’re trying to do better. It seems that photographing a project always takes more time than we allocate. This, combined with our tendency to prioritize current work over less urgent tasks, has left us with about five years worth of projects to photograph. This spring, we’re going to go on a photo blitz of our work. We’re excited about this effort. Of course, our portfolio galleries will have more projects as a result, but the images are only part of the story. One of the best aspects of our work is the story behind each project. There is always an interesting background that includes design process, construction tales, and terrific people. The before-and-after images of our addition and remodel work are fun to study. All of this would be impossible to sit down and crank out. So look for project profiles, stories about a single project, it’s history, images, and cast of characters. These should be fun to produce about once per month. I’ve thought of categorizing these as our ‘Project-O-The-Month.’ We’ll see…

Contractor selection: I’d like to share some thoughts on selecting a contractor. It is very difficult to get the appropriate fit. I find myself saying the same thing to every client regarding this topic. I’ll put it all in a post and share it here.

Justifications for hiring an architect: Of course, I’m a little biased on this issue, but I’ve spent a lot of time wrestling with whether our participation is a necessity or a luxury. I believe strongly in the value that we bring to any project. I’ll share some thoughts on this.

On the boards: Being a small firm, getting a new project is a lot like adopting a puppy. It’s cute, exciting, fun, and it might take some house training! I’d like to begin writing about our new projects as they arise. It will be fun for our new clients to share our post with their friends and family, and it will begin a process of documentation of our work that will extend through the completion of the project.

Dream Jobs: Frequently, Stacey and I will say to each other, “I wish we could design one of those…”I want to write about that. We’re about to begin a barn and cabin combination for a couple who own land two counties away. We’re very excited about this project. It’s a dream job for sure. I’d be very interested in developing blog topics about projects we'd like to do in the future.

Our 'green ethic' is something that deserves specific attention. We're dedicated to making good choices for our clients and that certainly includes making choices that protect the planet. We've got a lot to say about this one. It will be on ongoing topic for sure.

Client blogs are a lot of fun. There are several resources out there that make blogging very easy. I'd like to do a post describing how to start your own project blog. It's a remarkable undertaking to design and build a project. It is a very challenging, exciting and potentially rewarding experience. I can't express how fascinating all of these stories are. They shouldn't just fade into memory, they should be preserved and shared.

Guest posts: I would love to have friends, assoicates, and clients share their thoughts in this blog. We're not really thrilled with the idea of testimonials. I've never read one that didn't sound canned. Instead, maybe we could have clients simply share their experiences of their projects here. I'd also love to have architect friends from other regions share their thoughts on design and process. This could be interesting and ongoing.

What else? I've got a lot of ideas taking shape. I want to know your ideas too. Please email or leave a comment. I'll consider every request.

One of the best things about our work is that we get to work with some terrific people. Southern Reprographics handles our big printing jobs. They do our presentation boards, construction drawings, and any other random thing we ask them to do. They're about as fine a bunch of folks as you'll ever meet.

One of the worst things about our work is that we occasionally have to produce building specifications. Architecture is a wonderful profession that balances artistic expression with the pragmatics of problem-solving. If you put architecture in a centrifuge and spin out all of the passion, vision, and inspiration, you'd be left with the dry pulpy residue that is building specifications. We do specifications for one reason. We have to do them. Otherwise, I'd rather save the trees by saving the paper.

Now, here's how it all fits together. We just completed a spec that is about 300 pages long. It was torture, of course. I checked it and rechecked it for consistency. I was very impatient with the task and very relieved that it was over. I emailed the files to Southern Reprographics to print. I gave them specific instructions and waited for them to call to say they were ready for me to pick up. Instead I got a call from Deanna. She said that they had caught an error in my Table of Contents. The section numbers on a few sections were inconsistent with the actual section numbers. Not only did they catch my error, they offered to fix it for me. It was only changing a few numbers in the index, but what fantastic service! It would have been perfectly okay for them to have just printed the files without even looking at them. I wouldn't have ever expected them to catch my mistake. Wow!

So, to our friends at SRI, Jacob, Deanna, Derrick, Lisa, Ginger, Debbie, Mason, Ferris, and everyone else, thanks guys! You are always a pleasure to work with. You make us look good!

Bret