modern | green | sustainable architecture
“From site, client, and experience, Frank Harmon spins a highly specific, easy-living modernism.” - Vernon Mays, Residential Architect magazine
April 25, 2011
By Mike Welton
We are fortunate not only that North Carolina-based artist-turned-architect Frank Harmon made his first pilgrimage to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin recently, but also chose to put pen to paper - in more ways than one – while he was there. His impressions follow:…
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March 15, 2011 (Raleigh, NC) – Frank Harmon Architect PA of Raleigh, NC, has announced that project
Project manager Tika Hicks joins the award-winning firm.
manager/designer Tika Hicks of Raleigh has joined the firm’s award-winning team.
Hicks brings 12 years of experience in architectural project management, design and production services to the firm, which includes educational/institutional, commercial and residential projects, as well as historic preservation. Among other notable projects, she was instrumental in the restoration of the modernist Henry Kamphoefner residence and in its subsequent renovation/addition in conjunction with the late North Carolina State University’s College of Design Professor Robert Burns, FAIA.
Born in Chicago, Hicks grew up in Ithaca, New York, and moved to Raleigh in 1989. She attended Pennsylvania State University, where she concentrated in architecture, design and sculpture. She then studied abroad in Florence, Italy, before entering the N.C. State University College of Design, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Environmental Design in Architecture.
Hicks’ previous work experience includes stints with Raleigh firms Kurt Eichenberger, AIA, Richard Hall Associates, Clearscapes, and Cannon Architects, and with the Chapel Hill firm Lucy Carol Davis Architects.
Harmon’s firm’s reputation for innovative, sustainable and regionally appropriate design led Hicks to his office.
“I want to be part of a great team that creates excellent and exciting projects that contribute to the sustainability of the built environment,” she said recently. “A huge part of why I’m here is because I want to work on projects that change and improve the built environment. Frank was ‘green’ before ‘green’ was ‘green.’ I couldn’t be happier to be a part of his team.”
Hicks has already been assigned to work on several of Harmon’s projects that are in design development or construction, including the Shellfish Research Hatchery at UNC-Wilmington, the site plan and new facilities for the Audubon Sanctuary on Pine Island, NC, the United Therapeutics Field House in Durham, and Riverworks in Jacksonville where a former wastewater treatment plant is being converted into an Environmental and Education Center.
For more information on Frank Harmon Architect PA, visit www.frankharmon.com.
March 31, 2005 (RALEIGH, NC) – When Raleigh architect Frank Harmon, FAIA, designed a house along Shem Creek in Charleston’s low country, he faced a serious problem: How could he capitalize on the view of the creek and allow cooling breezes to enter the house, yet protect the creek-side elevation from excessive summer heat and extreme weather conditions, including hurricane-force winds and debris? The solution: A series of 800-pound, hand-fabricated steel screens, designed so that a single person can balance and manipulate them, which recently received a design award from Inform, an architectural journal in Virginia that covers four mid-Atlantic states.
The 10 screens, fabricated by Christian Karkow of Raleigh, are hinged above a porch that fronts the contemporary house’s large, southwest-facing glass wall, and are constructed of metal frames that encase perforated-metal panels commonly used in industrial flooring. Made of hot-dip galvanized steel, they resist the region’s wind-borne, corrosive salt. In their horizontal, or open, position, the screens shade the house in spring and fall. In the vertical position, they protect the glass wall from threatening weather and provide a shaded porch under the fierce summer sun while allowing cooling breezes to enter the house.
Shaped by climate and site, the award-winning screens also recall elements of the house’s physical context, such as the metallic construction of steel boatsheds down the creek and the shading blinds of traditional Charleston Single-House porches. The screens’ color and texture blends with silvery live oaks on the site.
Harmon, who calls the screens “a 21st-century solution to a 400-year-old problem,” received the award in the “architectural objects” category. His screens, along with other winning designs, will appear in the magazine’s May 2005 edition. Inform’s circulation area includes Virginia, West Virginia, Washington D.C. and North Carolina.
For more information on Frank Harmon, visit www.frankharmon.com.