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LAURA CASALE LAURACASALEARCHITECT.COM

from Design + Decor Volume 19 Issue 6

from Design + Decor Volume 19 Issue 6, page 72

DINYAR WADIA

Laura Casale lives and works as an architect in her hometown of Manhasset, along the North Shore of Long Island, NY. The village is a close-knit community on the water, with many locals staying in the area for generations. Laura’s lifelong friend and Manhasset local approached her to take his recently purchased 1960s colonial revival house and “renovate, restore and expand it.” The homeowners had bought the house as their forever home and family meeting place. They have grown children, one grandchild (with expectations of many more), and a large extended family who all live locally. It is not unusual for the couple to have 25 guests for Sunday dinner. One of the most important parts of the renovation, therefore, was the side addition of a multiuse room designed as an English conservatory. There had been a smaller 1980s porch enclosure on the site, but the homeowners needed a larger space to entertain, hang out and watch TV in front of the fire while enjoying views of the water and pool. They also needed the room to seat 26 for dinner when cleared of furniture. The challenging part of the project was designing a structure that was large enough to fit the site without crowding the pool.

The first step for Laura on any project is the site analysis, which includes learning about the factors that affect what can be built on the site, such as zoning restrictions, building codes, coastal issues, sunlight and much more. Laura meets the clients at the site so they can show her how they live and describe the changes they want to make. She can usually make quick sketches of their ideas on the spot to show options. After defining the design-build program with the client, Laura goes to the desk and begins to draw. This is her happy place. As Laura describes it, “I enjoy drawing and mapping out the design by hand. It keeps me in the enjoyment of the process of design; I’m happier drawing. I can use computer-aided design (CAD), but I can only think and design by hand.”

Laura earned her architectural degree at the Pratt Institute School of Architecture in New York City, when CAD was just being introduced to students and professionals. Pratt put more emphasis on hand drawings, which gave Laura a solid foundation and a preference for the art form. She also received master-class training in hand sketching at several New York City firms, including Swanke Hayden Connell, Perkins+Will, and Butler Rogers Baskett, where Laura worked before opening her own firm.

Laura does all the schematic drawings by hand (free sketch, scale-accurate and even yellow trace), which she believes her clients prefer. “Hand drawings hearken back to a time when artistry was truly appreciated, and hand-drawn blueprints and perspective drawings became a joyful part of the design process for the clients,” she says. At the beginning of any project, both the architect and the client are trying to conceptualize the design. The hand sketch is a joyful experience that also helps clients visualize the design.

Reosurce Architect

Laura Casale Architect

Laura Casale

84 Bridge Road

Manhasset, NY 11030

516.365.5896 lauracasalearchitect.com

Arenowned jazz musician and his wife called on Hiland Hall Turner Architects (HHT) to create a number of small cottages, which would be a family retreat along the southern shoreline of sparsely inhabited Tupper Lake in Nova Scotia. The cottages were to contain two en-suite bedrooms and a studio space that could double as a guest room. The clients wanted all the living spaces oriented to the view across Tupper Lake, but left the design up to Hiland and his team.

The environment’s fauna and waterfowl were the inspiration for the form of the first cottage. The design process went in many directions before the cottage evolved into its final form, which emulates the “wingspread” shape of many of the waterfowl that frequent the lake. The cottage’s form expressed the living environs and its relationship to the secluded woodland lake. The home was designed to allow in as much of the view and defused light as possible to incorporate the environment into the living areas of the house. Cedar trees are plentiful throughout the property, and natural cedar planking was used as a solar screening device in some areas of large glazed walls, creating a pattern of diffused light within the cottage. Natural indigenous materials were also utilized to meld the environs into the character of the building.

The parti drawing, according to Hiland, “is the idea of a thing in its simplest terms that brings forth the glimmer of an idea in order to visualize a thought. Without vision, there can be no creation. Parti diagrams are produced in a childlike manner, allowing the mind and hand to express the simplest of forms and ideas, unencumbered by the rigor of intellectual forethought. The design process is one of understanding the goals of the client both emotionally and intellectually through discussions of philosophy, rather than of how many or how large.”

Hiland’s design process is a bit different from that of most architects. Instead of discussing his client’s “must haves,” he prefers to search for the meaning of the build with his clients. His questions revolve around why they are building a house, why they have chosen this property, and what pleasant memories can be embroidered into the structure from a person’s past or present to create a sense of personal experiences. “The environment, the topography, the sun’s path, the prevailing winds, the views, the fauna, the character of the site—all must be synthesized and envisioned by the ‘artist/ architect’ to create something that is both of the owner and of the natural world,” explains Hiland. “This should be why we are architects—to create buildings that are a physical expression of these two forces.”

The remainder of Hiland’s process is the focus and due diligence needed to put materials and structure to the form. The notion of bringing the infinite into the practical, tangible world is done by working from the largest component to the smallest of details. After hand sketching the parti drawings, Hiland employs AutoCAD as a drafting tool to refine all the components of the house. “Design is a process of trial and error of refinements until all areas of the building have been thoroughly resolved,” he says. It is the architect’s job to combine artistic vision with technical building expertise to bring structures to reality. HHT uses 3D digital rendering as a useful and immeasurably important tool to assist the owner and the builder. The expression “a picture can speak a thousand words” certainly applies in this case.