Lookbook
Celebrating 16 years of rugs designed by New England Home’s 5 Under 40 winners.
Becky Garrity of Becky Garrity Interiors, Alison Hammatt of Alison Hammatt Home, Thomas J. Fraley of Gregory Lombardi Design, Jen Stephens of Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design, and Julien Jalbert of Knickerbocker Group.
Meet the 2025 5 Under 40 Award Winners
With a discriminating eye on the future, New England Home’s 5 Under 40 Awards celebrate the wealth of young design talent in New England.
This is the sixteenth year for the program, which honors excellence in residential architecture, interior design, and landscape design. Each year, our panel of judges selects five young professionals who embody that excellence in both the caliber of their work and in their contributions and dedication to New England’s vibrant design community.
This year’s awards ceremony will be held on September 18 at The Galleria at 333 Stuart Street in Boston. The festivities will include food, drink, and the chance to catch up with old friends while making new ones. The highlight of the evening is the auction of five unique rugs designed by our 2025 winners and produced by Landry & Arcari Rugs and Carpeting, with all proceeds supporting a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating women from South Asia. We can’t wait to see you there!
Text by MARIA L A PIANA P ortraits by BRUCE ROGOVIN
BECKY GARRITY
“I had a unique upbringing,” says Becky Garrity, recalling the five years she lived in Vienna, Austria, as a child. Her family traveled throughout Europe during that time, so she was immersed in history, culture, and architecture. “It shaped me in countless ways,” she says.
Garrity moved to Winchester, Massachusetts, when she was in middle school, and it was there that she had her own room for the first time, which piqued her interest in design. “I rearranged my furniture all the time,” she says. “I’d source vintage pieces, gravitating toward anything midcentury and art-deco inspired.” She studied art history at
Vanderbilt University and got her foot in the design door at Kristin Paton Interiors in Boston, where she worked for ten years. “I wore many hats and gained invaluable experience. It made me a strong project manager,” she says. “I became skilled at problemsolving and learned to always come up with plans B, C, and D.”
Now thirty-five and at the helm of her own Boston-based design firm, Becky Garrity Interiors, since 2018, Garrity says she experiences “deep
Photograph (left) by Joyelle West
Becky Garrity of Becky Garrity Interiors
5 Under 40 Awards | INTERIOR DESIGN
fulfillment in creating layered, livable spaces.” Her work is a thoughtful combination of elements from different eras. She’s fond of textures and neutrals. “I’m inspired by nature,” she says. “I tend to favor organic and earthy tones over punchy colors.”
Garrity and her husband, Ryan, who is in construction, currently live in Boston with their Australian labradoodle puppy. In time, the designer plans to grow her firm
Becky Garrity believes in balance everywhere, even underfoot. Hence, the structural, symmetrical design of her rug, a model of minimalist repetition. Inspired by the art deco principles of geometry and simplicity, it’s earthy, monochromatic, and quietly luxurious. Sculptural silhouettes, rich textures, and subtle silk accents combine to create a “composition that’s both timeless and grounded,” she says. The designer describes it as “the perfect anchor” for a thoughtfully curated space.
to take on more projects, particularly anything involving older homes: “I love the idea of taking a beautiful home with good bones and honoring its history.”
THOMAS J. FRALEY
Thomas J. Fraley’s passion for landscape design was awakened the summer before high school, which he spent in northern France. His work is still deeply inspired by travel, especially to the Caribbean, which he visits every year. “The landscape there opens my eyes to form, color, and texture,” he says. “I live and work in New England, but I love to see what’s going on in the world.”
At thirty-seven, Fraley is a senior associate with Gregory Lombardi Design, a landscape architecture firm with headquarters in North Billerica, Massachusetts. He grew up in southern Indiana and, in the summer months, his family vacationed at their cabin in north-central Minnesota.
“I spent a lot of time outdoors and was always interested in plants,”
he says. He earned a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from Ball State University.
After moving to Boston in 2012, Fraley worked with the city’s Parks and Recreation department then joined a nonprofit focused on sustainability. He serendipitously found his way to the firm of renowned landscape architect Morgan Dix Wheelock, where he stayed for three years. “I was lucky. I had a lot of latitude, and I learned so much,” he says.
Photograph (left) by Neil Landino
Thomas J. Fraley of Gregory Lombardi Design
5 Under 40 Awards
A licensed landscape architect in Maine, Fraley leads his firm’s northern New England projects while setting standards for the company’s practices and protocols. “I try to challenge conventional ways of thinking, to push the envelope, the aesthetic,” he says, “to embrace what it means to practice landscape architecture.” Fraley’s “planting forward” process positions horticulture as
Place-based memory is incredibly powerful, and it was Thomas J. Fraley’s first trip to St. John that inspired a painting he made, a painting that years later inspired his rug design. Captivated by the Caribbean’s vibrant palette and bold, exotic vegetation, the landscape architect came to appreciate the beauty that lies beyond his New England backyard. “The trip challenged my notion of what landscape design is and can be.”
the driver of design, whether creating lush environments in the region’s vernacular or exploring what is possible in the face of a changing climate.
He lives on the shore north of Boston, where he tackles home and garden improvement projects with his gardening assistant, Tucker, a loyal five-year-old golden retriever.
Photography (top right) by Thomas J. Fraley and (above and top left) Neil Landino
ALISON HAMMATT
“I always used to say that in another lifetime I’d want to be an interior designer,” says former teacher Alison Hammatt. As luck would have it, she decided to be one in this lifetime.
Hammatt, who just turned thirtyfive, had been a high school English teacher for almost ten years when the pandemic hit. Like so many, she and her husband, Brendan, were stopped in their tracks. They were living on Long Island when they decided to move to Providence “without a real plan.” She looked for teaching jobs but couldn’t find one.
Designing interiors was always in the back of her mind. “My mother worked with professionals when decorating our homes,” Hammatt
remembers. “I loved following them around. After school I’d go with my mom to look at fabrics. And I admired the relationships designers had with their clients.”
Coincidentally, two friends asked her design advice at the same time— one in Rhode Island and one on Long Island. “They said they loved my taste and asked if I’d be interested in getting paid to work with them on their homes,” she says. “It was May 2022—and the next thing I knew I was
Photograph
Alison Hammatt of Alison Hammatt Home
5 Under 40 Awards |
a working designer.”
Based in Providence, Alison Hammatt Home takes on residential projects throughout New England and beyond.
“I think of my work as rooted in classic design but updated with fresh, thoughtful details,” she says. “With timeless interiors,
Alison Hammatt looked to both of her grandmothers for her flatweave rug’s inspiration. The stylized floral pattern is based on midcentury Scandinavian rug designs. It honors her grandmother from Sweden, who decorated her traditional home with rag rugs and handmade straw ornaments at the holidays. The color story evolved from the pinks, rouges, blushes, and other warm tones of her other grandmother’s elegant Georgianstyle home. The designer says she added the greens and blues that she favors “as a way to weave in my own story.”
it’s always about a blend of old and new.” Hammatt’s projects skew toward a layered and lived-in sensibility, with a touch of whimsy. She lives with her husband (a former teacher, he’s now in finance) and their two young children in a home dating back to 1854. “It’s a perfectly imperfect house, and we love it,” she says.
What is her most important accomplishment to date? “That’s easy,” Hammatt says with a laugh. “Starting a business with a four-month-old at home. Definitely.”
Photography
JULIEN JALBERT
Growing up in rural New Hampshire with a self-taught architect and builder for a dad and a teacher for a mom, Julien Jalbert learned how to design, construct, and fix just about anything. “My father imparted all his skills to me,” says Jalbert, an architect with Knickerbocker Group, a designbuild firm with offices in Portland and Boothbay, Maine.
Now thirty-eight, Jalbert was preparing for his vocation in every practical way, but it took a year as a computer science major at Northeastern University for him to realize his calling. He discovered coding
really wasn’t for him, so he changed his major to architecture and never looked back. “Immediately I had the sense that ‘these are my people,’ ” he remembers.
In between earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, he took a job at Northeastern doing renovations on campus, then he designed restaurants for a small boutique firm. All the while he was sharpening his focus on sustainability. He obtained LEED certification and studied ways to
Photograph (left) by Jeff Roberts
Julien Jalbert of Knickerbocker Group
5 Under 40 Awards | ARCHITECTURE
recycle, renew, and combat climate change.
At his Knickerbocker Group interview in 2017, Jalbert shared his thesis on modular construction; once hired, he put his passion for energy efficiency to work. In time, he was asked to study trajectories the firm might take to become more sustainable. That led to the development of the company’s Prefab Pod division. “We figured out how to build homes faster and more efficiently with environmentally responsible, bio-based materials,” he says.
Jalbert lives in a neighborhood of postWorld War II homes in South Portland with his wife, Sarah, and their three young sons. Despite his expertise in sustainability, he believes he was chosen for the 5 Under 40 honor because his portfolio is fairly diverse. “I can do vernacular Maine as well as modern and sleek,” he says. “I don’t stay in one lane.”
“The hexagon is a true force of nature,” explains Julien Jalbert, who admits a fascination with geometry and the “awe-inspiring” six-sided wonder of the world. Its prevalence in the natural world is remarkable—from turtle shells and insect eyes to honeycombs. The architect’s rug pattern celebrates the hexagon, and the bee, a critical player in our ecosystem. We take the bee for granted, says Jalbert, so he wanted his rug to “pay homage to the small and busy worker that helps keep us all well-fed.”
JEN STEPHENS
A passion for preservation and a wealth of horticultural knowledge define Jen Stephens—the person and the accomplished landscape designer. Stephens, who’ll be forty in November, is a principal at Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design, with offices in Stoneham and Vineyard Haven, both in Massachusetts, and Portland, Maine.
She grew up on a Christmas tree farm in rural Massachusetts, where she discovered a love of plants and landscapes from an early age. She also became attuned to the idea of renewability. “Every April we’d be out there planting hundreds of bare-root
seedlings to replace the trees we cut,” she remembers. “And then we’d watch them grow to full-size trees in ten years.” It stayed with her. “Subconsciously, I learned just how much of an influence Mother Nature has on the rhythm of growth,” she says.
As a child, Stephens loved both science and art. “I always thought I’d go to art school,” she says, but instead she fell in love with the campus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “When I found landscape
Photograph (left) by Chris Rucinski
Jen Stephens of Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design
5 Under 40 Awards
architecture among its majors, I just knew,” she says. “It flexes both sides of my brain.”
While earning her bachelor’s in landscape architecture, she spent summers working at Bigelow Nurseries in Northborough, where she became a Massachusetts Certified Horticulturist. Her first post-grad job was at Copley Wolff Design Group, focusing on public spaces. She liked the work, she says, but designing for people she didn’t know? Not so much.
When Stephens was offered an opportunity to join former 5 Under 40 winner Matthew Cunningham—his first hire, by the way—she jumped at it. She’s been integral to many of
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Jen Stephens is hopelessly in love with classic Persian rugs, often called Serapi in the trade. She’s equally enamored with inspired garden designs. So she combined the two for her rug, abstracting a classic Serapi pattern into a formal garden plan. Her rug depicts a fifty-acre estate radiating from a central medallion lake, surrounded by textural meadows and a tree-lined canal border. The vibrantly colored rug is woven at twenty scale using more than 800,000 hand-knots.
the firm’s notable projects from day one. Stephens says she’s inspired by “good food, music, and old things.” She lives in a 200-year-old house in Acton, Massachusetts, with her husband, Peter (also a landscape architect), and their young daughter.
What’s next? “I want to mentor some of our emerging professionals,” she says.
“I’d like to inspire their curiosity and give back to the community I love.”
At Landry & Arcari Rugs and Carpeting, we couldn’t think of a better way to honor young design professionals than to allow them full creative license to express their unique voice through a hand-knotted Nepalese carpet. We love watching the wheels in their minds turn, and quite often come completely off during the two-week, and usually frantic, deadline we give them to submit a design.
But little do they know this is only a small part of the process. These “Lucky 5” individuals then have the opportunity to truly appreciate the textural differences between hand-spun wool and mohair, as well as looped pile silk, and the impact those choices have on the character of their rug. Then comes color selections as they comb through a myriad of wool poms in hundreds of varying shades, much like some newfound addiction. This is all happening simultaneously as ideas bounce between the five winners, Eric Brissette (who runs the L&A custom rug program), and the weavers in Nepal.
During the process of sharing design ideas back and forth, something magical happens to everyone involved, in the form of an anticipated excitement knowing that this creation will soon be on loom and weaving will start, knot by knot, until its completion. Fast forward a few months to one of the most exciting days of the year at Landry & Arcari, when the 5 Under 40 rugs finally arrive in our Boston showroom. We all anticipate in silence as we unpack each one and marvel at the uniqueness of each rug, and then miraculously, it’s not so quiet anymore.
Thank you, New England Home, for your partnership and the opportunity to share our love of the handwoven rug process with these incredibly talented designers.
–Julie Cook Arcari
Rug Design Retrospective
HANSY BETTER BARRAZA | 2010
STEPHANIE HOROWITZ | 2010
QUENTIN KELLEY | 2010
MEICHI PENG | 2010
PATRICK PLANETA | 2010
DEBRA FOLZ | 2011
RACHEL REIDER | 2011
JINHEE PARK | 2011
KELLY HARRIS SMITH | 2011
NIMA YADOLLAHPOUR | 2011
JOHN DAY | 2012
ASHER RODRIGUEZ-DUNN | 2012
AMY AIDINIS HIRSCH | 2012
ELIZABETH STIVINGNICHOLS | 2012
KELLY TAYLOR | 2012
MATTHEW CUNNINGHAM | 2013
TIFFANY EASTMAN | 2013
PHOEBE LOVEJOY RUSSELL | 2013
RINA OKAWA | 2013
JONATHAN GLATT & SARA OSSANA | 2013
PAULINE CURTISS | 2014
GREGORY H. EHRMAN | 2014
JILL GOLDBERG | 2014
J. BRANDON JONES | 2014
ALEC TESA | 2014
JOSH LINDER | 2015
COREY PAPADOPOLI | 2015
ADAM ROGERS | 2015
TROY SOBER | 2015
KATE STERLING | 2015
ESTHER & PAUL HALFERTY |
JOHN HAVEN | 2016
CALEB JOHNSON | 2016
JAYME KENNERKNECHT | 2016
BENJAMIN UYEDA | 2016
ELLISHA ALEXINA | 2017
KRISTINA CRESTIN | 2017
NINA FARMER | 2017
ERIN GATES | 2017
MAGGIE MINK | 2017
KELLY HEALY | 2018
CALLA MCNAMARA | 2018
SARAH SCALES | 2018
RUSSELL STOTT | 2018
DANE AUSTIN | 2019
MILES ENDO | 2019
TYLER KARU | 2019
THOMAS McNEILL | 2019
CHERYL RUSS | 2019
JESSIE CARROLL | 2020
ELIZABETH HENDRICKSON | 2020
STEPHANIE KING | 2020
EMILY PINNEY | 2020
ALINA WOLHARDT | 2020
GABRIELLE BOVE | 2021
MIKA DURRELL | 2021
HEATHER HARRIS | 2021
MEAGHAN MOYNAHAN | 2021
HEATHER SOUZA | 2021
ERIKA L. DODGE | 2022
ROISIN GIESE | 2022
LAUREN HAMILTON | 2022
DEVIN HEFFERON | 2022
HANNAH ORAVEC | 2022
RYAN ALCAIDINHO | 2023
CHRISTOPHER BUCCINO | 2023
LAURA KEELER PIERCE | 2023
MARISSA SANTOS | 2023
JOSEPH WERNER | 2023
EDWARD ADAMS | 2024
CORY GANS | 2024
DARIEN FORTIER | 2024
HEIDI LACHAPELLE | 2024
BLAIR MOORE | 2024
5 Under 40 Awards
We’re delighted to honor the 2025 winners of New England Home’s 5 Under 40 Awards. Please join us to celebrate exceptional design at our gala and auction— and contribute to a very good cause by bidding on five one-of-a-kind rugs designed by the winners.
The Party Thank You to Our Sponsors
DATE:
LOCATION:
SCHEDULE: 5:30 P.M. 6:00 P.M. 7:30 P.M.
TICKETS:
September 18, 2025
The Galleria, 333 Stuart St., Boston
Rug Preview Awards Ceremony and Rug Auction
Cocktail Party
$120 online
$130 at the door (cash only)
tickets, visit nehomemag.com/5-under-40/tickets PRESENTING SPONSOR HOSTED BY SIGNATURE SPONSORS SPECIALTY SPONSORS
