At museums and visitors centers, less interpretation is more.

One day in the 1970s, I wandered into the rare documents room at the British Museum, where cloth-shrouded glass cases held poems, speeches and letters written by famous people. You could pull back a cloth, read the document, and

North Bridge at Concord by Frank Harmon

cover it up again. When I pulled back one of the cloths, I caught my breath: Before me was the Magna Carta. How amazing, I thought, to find the most important document in British history displayed so diffidently, in a glass case with a curtain over it. I was thrilled.

In America, we handle our history differently. The Declaration of Independence, for example, is encased in bulletproof glass in a gold-plated, titanium frame filled with argon gas. The case is lowered each night into a crypt beneath the National. Archive. The display is so overpowering that it is possible to feel that the container is more important than the founding document inside. It makes me feel as if I am being told of its importance rather than invited to discover it. Yet history is best discovered by each of us, just as democracy is best preserved as a personal responsibility.

I had another epiphany recently when I visited the North Bridge at Concord, Massachusetts, where the first battle of the American War of Independence took place. Now preserved as part of the Minute Man National Historical Park, the Bridge at Concord is a simple wooden structure spanning a stream about fifty feet wide. At each end of the bridge stand two stone monuments, one erected by the Americans, one by the British, many years after the battle. There is no visitors center nearby, no auditorium with a twenty-minute film, no interactive video recreating the battle, and certainly no titanium cases containing artifacts in argon. Instead, in a clearing next to the bridge, visitors sit in a small semicircle of wooden benches. A park ranger stands and tells how the British army, marching out from Boston to intimidate the colonists, approached the bridge and was met by a volunteer group of Minutemen.

The effect of his story is compelling. We can see the short distance between the two groups of men, who, muskets drawn, faced death that morning. We can imagine how the roar of guns silenced birds’ songs on that spring day. We can see the road where the American farmers approached the bridge, and we can see the road down which the British fled. The ranger quotes a poem written by Ralph Waldo Emerson for the dedication of the American monument on July 4,1837:

On the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood

And fired the shot heard round the world.

There at the North Bridge, nothing stands between our history and us except sunlight reflected in the dust. We are enlightened without being pushed, always a welcome experience.

Sometimes the best thing for a designer to do is to not get in the way.

Will Lambeth

May 11, 2011 (Raleigh, NC) – Frank Harmon Architect PA is pleased to announce  that project designer Will Lambeth has been accepted into the graduate program in Architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

For the past four years, Lambeth has worked in Frank Harmon’s award-winning firm on a variety of significant projects, including the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science’s Prairie Ridge Eco-station in Raleigh, the North Carolina chapter of the American Institute of Architect’s new Center for Architecture & Design in downtown Raleigh, and the Children’s Learning Center at the North Carolina Zoological Garden in Asheboro, NC. His most recent project, the Lath House at the JC Raulston Arboretum, NC State University, won a merit award from the Triangle section of the AIA in April 2011 and was published in ArchDaily.com, an international online architecture magazine.

A Greensboro, NC native, Will Lambeth joined Frank Harmon Architect PA as an intern architect in May 2009 after working part-time for the firm for two years. He was the 2009 valedictorian graduate of the NC State College of Design, Bachelor of Architecture program, where he received the Faculty Award for design excellence. He studied at the Prague Institute in 2007.

Lambeth’s areas of expertise include digital and physical modeling, graphic design, schematic design, and site analysis.

“I’ve learned so much about life and architecture working at FHA,” Lambeth said. “The firm has been like a family to me.”

“We are very proud of Will and wish him great success at Harvard,” said Frank Harmon, FAIA. “We look forward to seeing his future work.”

For more information on Frank Harmon Architect PA, visit www.frankharmon.com.

February 4, 2011 (RALEIGH, NC) – Frank Harmon, FAIA, principal of the award-winning firm Frank Harmon Architect PA in Raleigh, NC, will present a lecture at the Dalhousie University School of Architecture in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Monday, February 28, followed by studio critiques on Tuesday, March 1.

Brian MacKay-Lyons, principal of internationally renowned MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects in Halifax and a professor of architecture at Dalhousie, invited Harmon to present a lecture on “Place Making.”  Harmon and his wife, landscape architect Judy Harmon, will be MacKay-Lyons’ guests at his farm in Kingsburg over the weekend leading up to the lecture.

MacKay-Lyons is one of three fellow architects whose work Frank Harmon often references in seminars on the importance of regionalism in the process of creating innovative, sustainable, and appropriate contemporary design. He uses his own work along with that of by MacKay-Lyons, Glenn Murcutt of Australia, and Rick Joy of Tuscon, Arizona, to illustrate elements and themes that run through regionally appropriate architecture. According to Harmon, those elements include landscape, materials and construction, weather and climate, roof forms that shelter or collect rainwater, and clients.

Harmon and MacKay-Lyons were included in Residential Architect magazine’s “RA 50: The Short List of Architects We Love,” published in the November/December edition, as was Glenn Murcutt. For more information on Frank Harmon, visit www.frankharmon.com. For more information on Brian MacKay-Lyons, visit www.mlsarchitects.ca.

Founded in 1749, Dalhousie is one of Canada’s top research and teaching universities. Its School of Architecture offers professional education in architecture and planning to students from Canada, the United States and abroad.

December 30, 2010 (RALEIGH, NC) –  For the first time in its history, Residential Architect magazine has published its “RA 50: A Short List of Architects We Love.” And Frank Harmon Architect PA of Raleigh, NC, is among them.

According to editor Claire Conroy, “This collection comprises [firms] whose names keep rising to the top.” Along with Harmon’s firm, the list includes such illustrious names as Glenn Murcutt, Brooks-Scarpa Architects, Lake/Flato, and Michelle Kaufman.

Senior editors Nigel Maynard, Cheryl Weber, Meghan Drueding, and Bruce Snider say the RA 50 represents “a broad collection of people who simply – day in and day out – do very good, interesting work.”

Frank Harmon Architect PA is no stranger to Residential Architect’s pages. In 2003, the Taylor Vacation House the firm designed for a couple in the Bahamas was named RA’s House of the Year. In 2005, the firm received the magazine’s Top Firm of the Year accolade.

Since then, founder and principal Frank Harmon, FAIA, has been featured in a number of the magazine’s articles on sustainable, regionally appropriate residential design and construction, and he has been a speaker at RA’s annual “Reinvention” design symposium.

The RA 50 list first appeared in the magazine’s November-December digital version then in print. Harmon’s firm appears on page 30 beside Australian architect Glenn Murcutt, Hon. FAIA. Expanded versions of each architect’s profile will soon be featured on the website www.residentialarchitect.com.

“One of the most exciting things about this is that my firm is featured on the same page as Glenn Murcutt, the most important contemporary architect working today, and a designer from whom I have learned so much,” said Harmon. “I’m also honored simply to be included in the pages of Residential Architect. RA is truly the finest publication on residential design and construction in the nation.”

Residential Architect is an award-winning national magazine focusing exclusively on the residential architecture profession.

“We put this short list together as an end-of-year tribute to this admirable profession,” the editors state.

For more information, visit www.residentialarchitect.com.

For more information on Frank Harmon Architect PA, visit www.frankharmon.com.

By J. Michael Welton  

When it breaks ground on its new headquarters building in downtown Raleigh on Dec. 9, the North Carolina chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA NC) also will be deploying three essential tools needed to scale this cliff-like economic downturn known as the Great Recession.

They are vision, courage and leadership.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

Harmon’s Karmous-Edwards house in Raleigh’s Coley Forest neighborhood will be open for public touring during Triangle Modernist Houses’ “TMH Modern 2010” tour in Raleigh on September 25. Completed in 1998, the house features deep overhanging rooflines and natural cedar shingles. It is nestled into the edge of a large corner lot, preserving most of the property for a park-like setting. Porches and a large terrace extend the indoors into the landscaping. The house was featured in Raleigh Metro Magazine in 2006.

Harmon’s award-winning Strickland-Ferris house in the Laurel Hills neighborhood will be featured in the first-ever homes tour sponsored by the Triangle section the American Institute of Architect’s North Carolina chapter (AIA Triangle) a week later on October 2. Completed in 2004, the house perches on a steep, wooded hillside above Crabtree Creek on broad-shouldered wood trusses for minimal site disturbance. The northern elevation features a glass and steel façade from floor to ceiling. A butterfly-shaped roof seems to hover above it.

The Strickland-Ferris house has received both AIA North Carolina and AIA Triangle design awards. In 2009, it won the Grand Award in Custom Home Magazine’s Custom Home Design Awards. It has been featured in Architectural Record, Dwell, Wood Design & Building, and Raleigh Metro magazines, and was included in Triangle Modernist Houses’ 2009 fall homes tour.

Frank Harmon Architect PA was founded by Frank Harmon, FAIA, in 1985. For more information on his firm and other projects, visit www.frankharmon.com.

For more information on the TMH Modern 2010 Tour, visit www.trianglemodernisthouses.com/2010.

For more information on the AIA Triangle homes tour go to www.trianglehomestour.com.

Soon, on a site in downtown Raleigh that architect Frank Harmon puckishly likens to the shape of a pork chop, the North Carolina chapter of the AIA will break ground for a slim new Center for Architecture and Design.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

AIA NC Center for Architecture & Design as seen from Peace Street.

By Gwen Maura McLaughlin

Dr. Michael K. Orback, Advisor

View the entire project here:  Sustainable_Architecture_on_the_North_Carolina_Coast_The_Ocean_…

Designed by Frank Harmon Architect PA in Raleigh – a nationally recognized leader in sustainable design – the project will include a 6500-square-foot Visitor Center with exhibit space, an auditorium, classrooms, workspace and administrative offices, plus an 600-square-foot outdoor classroom. A trail will lead from to the outdoor classroom at the edge of the pond.

According to Frank Harmon, FAIA, the building “touches the site as lightly as possible in an attempt to protect and preserve the many species of plants and wildlife that call Merchants Millpond State Park home.” The project respects the environment, he said, by minimizing the impact and footprint of both building and the parking area.

Daylight and views will be available in all occupied spaces, he said, with particularly dramatic views available through the two-story glass window in the lobby and the adjacent porch along the Millpond side of the building. Every main space in the building will benefit from natural light through at least two sides of the room, which will reduce the need for artificial illumination.

The Visitors Center will also utilize an efficient geothermal heat pump system to protect the surroundings from the noise of the mechanical equipment and to reduce energy use.

Locally available materials, such as Atlantic White Cedar wood siding, will be used on the interior and exterior of the building. “To protect the native Atlantic White Cedar species, at least 95 percent of the lumber will come from trees in the Dismal Swamp that were felled during Hurricane Fran,” Harmon noted.

Since water conservation is a primary concern, the Visitor Center will contain dual-flush toilets and waterless urinals. Collection cisterns will provide rainwater for irrigation and hosing down canoes at the Outdoor Classroom.

Merchants Millpond is a Registered Natural Heritage Area that covers 1900 acres and includes the millpond and part of Lassiter Swamp. It was established as a state park so that its diverse biological, scenic, archaeological, geological and recreational values could be protected.  For more information and directions to the park, visit http://ncparks.gov/Visit/parks/memi/main.php.

For more information on Frank Harmon, visit www.frankharmon.com.

The theme for this year’s three-day symposium (March 27-29) is “Between the Lines: Innovation In Art, Architecture and Design.” Harmon and the other members of his panel will address building “as a sustainable process which caries broader implications of social, environmental and economic responsibility,” according to Anna Marshall-Baker, moderator for the panel. The other panelists are: developer Dennis Quaintance of Quaintance-Weaver Restaurants & Hotels in Greensboro; green building systems engineering Isaac Panzarella of Consider Design in Raleigh; and John Meggs of Nature Neutral, a Charlottesville, VA, company that offers environmentally responsible building supplies.
“The intention of the design, arts, and technology symposium (dats) is to bring together communities, industries, and individuals in the Piedmont Triad to explore new and innovative approaches to design and technology,” said Marshall-Baker. “The objective is for the audience to see the interface of building technologies with design and business.”

Harmon’s panel discussion will take place from 2:30-3:30 in the Claxton Room of the Elliott University Center. Each panelist will introduce himself and his work, then the floor will be open for questions. For more information on the entire Symposium, visit www.dats.uncg.edu.

Frank Harmon is principal of Frank Harmon Architect PA in Raleigh, which recently won First Place in a professional design competition for a new headquarters building for the North Carolina component of the American Institute of Architects. His winning design is thorough “green,” encompassing both low-tech and high-technology innovations for sustainability. For more information, visit www.frankharmon.com.