| Firm Description
Based in Georgetown, Barnes Vanze & Associates has enjoyed a long
and
successful design history in the Washington area and beyond. Principal
Anthony S. Barnes, AIA, is originally from South Africa. After working
in London and Guatemala, Mr. Barnes came to the United States to attend
the graduate architectural program at Yale. After graduating in 1983,
he moved to Washington where he joined Hartman-Cox Architects. Principal
Stephen J. Vanze, AIA, grew up in New York,
attended Brown and the University of Virginia, and moved to Washington
in 1977 where he joined the Washington office of Skidmore, Owings, and
Merrill. Three years later he went to Hartman-Cox, where he and Mr.
Barnes began working together. Mr. Barnes and Mr. Vanze left Hartman-Cox
to found their firm in 1989.
Over the past decade, Barnes Vanze has grown from two partners and a
typewriter to a fifteen person office that now relies, in part, on the
latest computer software and construction document production techniques.
The firm has completed several hundred projects, and although its focus
has always been on private residential work, they also have produced
many commercial and institutional projects.
The firm's design aesthetic has remained fairly constant over the last
10 years: It is purposely flexible so that the response is to the particular
problem, the site, or existing structures, and not predetermined. Typically,
that response is rooted in some historic precedent, even if that precedent
is "modern."
Project Description
Original House: 2583 sq. ft.; Addition: 2344 sq. ft.
The restoration of an historic building is rarely a simple, straightforward
process of rendering the old new again. The well-sited Georgian house
in the countryside of Madison County had undergone a less than graceful
aging process that involved additions, further renovations and non-historic
alterations. Thus, complete
reclamation of the original 1850s structure was not an option. But a
return to the stately character of the house while providing a comfortable
place to dwell for a modern family became a feasible and admirable goal.
An early two-story addition that had been constructed to provide servant's
quarters was replaced with a similarly scaled two-story addition that
houses a modern kitchen, family room and the master bedroom. An engaged-end
chimney was added to the end of this wing to mirror the fireplace located
on the other end of the original house. This type of chimney, which
is slightly proud of the wall into which it is set, is an interesting
feature of the vernacular reproduced faithfully.
A later renovation to incorporate a kitchen in the basement and enclose
the lower porch with sliding glass doors further diminished the historic
character of the house. The lower porch was restored to its original
arcade form using new brick and stone supports, and the former kitchen
space now has a more appropriate service function.
On the interior, previous design interventions of additional walls to
divide rooms were removed to recover the original spatial organization.
The addition of a back stairway to connect the new to the old allowed
for the incorporation of an interesting feature that highlights the
house's unusual construction. The frame structure is built of 1 x 5
pine timbers stacked like bricks from the foundation to the roof, and
the new stairway displays this construction detail in an exposed panel.
Old pine floorboards and recycled doors were also used whenever possible
to further the strong connection to the past. New windows are modeled
after the old, but are larger to allow more light to penetrate the interior
as well as give stunning views of the
grounds of rolling farmland with forests in the distance. The restoration
was completed with the creation of a new barn, carefully sited to frame
the relocated entrance drive. |
