Gate from atrium to main collection at the new Barnes Collection in Philadelphia

The Ito/Gayer home and the Indy Awards.

We have worked on many lovely homes in Trinity Park and specifically on Watts Street. We are delighted to be working with Kristin Ito and Charlie Gayer on their home at Watts and Urban. Once upon a time it was a lovely, stately home and over the years it was chopped into four small rental units. Kristin and Charlie used to live in the neighborhood and walked by this house daydreaming of how they could buy it and fix it up one day. Fast foreward about five years and that is just what they are doing. We are working with Jon Fish of Acanthus Construction to return the home back to a single family residence. Sara Lachenman is helping us with the research for the historic tax credits. Jon has made great progress on the demolition and happily we have "found" some original window openings and the old wrap around porch ceiling still in place. I can't wait to open up the porch again and see their kids playing in the yard. The home will be on the hard hat portion of the Trinity Park home tour on October 6th 2012. Tickets will be for sale in September. Congratulations to Jon for his Indy Award for Best Builder - ECA also got the Best Green Architect!

Ito/Gayer demolition in process

Thanks to all of the folks who voted for Cassihaus (#18) for the Matsumoto Prize on the Triangle Modernist Home web site.

There's still a chance to slide in a few more votes before 5:00 p.m. Sunday July 22nd by voting here. Once again George Smart continues to raise the profile of the many fabulous Triangle modernist homes to his audience across the United States.

Cassilhaus north deck at sunset

Are you dreaming of a custom Eco-Modern home near Forest Hills?

Ellen Cassilly Architect, and BuildSense are teaming up to design and build three wonderful homes at the corner of Kent and Ward Streets for some lucky clients. Your new home could be one of them! Please take a look at our informational flyer below and contact us to find out more. 919.530.1149.

NCSU Design/Build Summer Studio

The last few years the Architecture Department at NCSU's School of Design has had an Architecture Design/Build Studio during the summer. It is a fast paced 12 weeks where about a dozen students design, draw, estimate, order materials, fabricate parts, and build the whole project start to finish. The class is off and running. Ellen is team teaching again with Randy Lanou, Erik Melhman, Scott Metheny, and Aaron Trudo.

The students have really been working diligently on their project at the art park of the North Carolina Museum of Art. They designed a three piece cast-in-place concrete wall and a beautifully detailed floating ipe deck and railing. They are fighting the extreme heat and the isolated summer showers to get it finished by mid-August. If you are in the area please stop by their site near the fabulous filtration pond and give them some encouragement. I love the great texture that they got from the board-formed tinted concrete.

Trellis, bench and wall

On the home front, Frank and I finished the cedar trellis. I'm hoping to design a variation on it for some clients who want a 'live' fence for growing berries but also need to contain two escape artist dogs. The next Cassilhaus project is a low stone wall and cedar bench in a shade garden. Our friend Linda is helping us with her stone wall expertise. Frank whipped out this cedar bench a few weekends ago. I'm going to start calling him Mr. DIY.

The summer has turned hot, so here is a dewy spring image of the garden with Rhododendron and Allium in bloom next to some fabulous blue grasses. Hopefully you can find a cool place to sit and dream for a moment this summer.