Thoughtful Architecture for Homes That Fit Your Lifestyle

It was a time when hippies were moving to the state with great expectations and a plethora of creative ideas. 1970's Vermont was a place alive and experimenting with alternative building methods and home energy ideas.

Russell's dad was an architect, and he was awed as a kid by his beautiful pen and ink renderings and amazing balsa wood models. They spent many hours fixing up the old farmhouse and working on the various outbuildings around the farm. Russell loved the hands-on satisfaction of creating and building things. When his dad saw his interest in hand drawing, architecture, and building construction, he let Russell tag along on jobsite visits and later connected him to many summer construction jobs. This was an invaluable experience which showed him how things go together… or not. He got to see several experimental and creative passive and active solar projects.

Russell went to architecture school at Kansas State University… a practical move, as it limited his passion for the mountains and skiing. You would think a school in the middle of Kansas would be very conservative, and although some things were, it was a very creative and inspiring time for him. He discovered Christopher Alexander's “A Pattern Language,” and thought he'd found the real bible.

His thesis in school was “How to Make a Small House Feel Large.” He established ten guidelines or patterns that worked to increase the perceived dimensions of spaces. In fact, an article he wrote for Fine Homebuilding titled “Big Ideas for Small Houses,” published a few years ago, summarizes this work.

Russell did his internship in the office of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, with Peter Bohlin in the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania office. This was an influential and creative time for him. They instilled the mantra “See the problem as an opportunity” — and they did. When Peter announced they'd just won a competition with Jim Cutler to design Bill Gates's house, he asked if Russell would be willing to work on the project. Obviously, he jumped on it!

Russell worked on the Gates project for almost 6 years. After the Gates project and a short stint in Jim Cutler's office, he worked for Marc LaRoche Architects. They had a connection in the San Francisco Bay area to one of the founding partners of Oracle Computers. He worked on several projects from wineries in Napa Valley to a 12,000 square foot compound in San Francisco. Again, a great experience, but he had a nagging feeling that it didn't feel right working on these big projects. Many of these projects claimed to be using environmental care in construction. And yes, there was a lot of good that came out of it, but they were also laden with environmental irony. For instance, the product might have been sustainably harvested, but it was shipped from halfway around the world and they needed 5 tons of it.

It's not ego-building, it's eco-building.

When he started his firm in 2004, Russell decided that he needed to move on from the big house projects and re-engage in what Frank Lloyd Wright expressed as “The true basis for any serious study of the art of architecture is in the indigenous structures, the more humble buildings everywhere, which are to architecture what folk-lore is to literature or what folk-songs are to music, and with which architects are seldom concerned.” A great house doesn't mean it has to be big.

Better a house be too small a few times a year than too big the rest of the year.