Musings.

When Marlene and E. Dale Adkins’s home of 22 years, a 1960s ranch house in Greenspring Valley, Maryland, was lost in a fire in 2013, the couple vowed to rebuild. Read on: https://www.dwell.com/article/baltimore-owings-mills-maryland-residential-architect-ziger-snead-burnt-wood-siding-corten-steel-shou-sugi-ban-fe0d5d78/cover

This landscape by Campion Hruby Landscape Architects was part of the renovation of a mid-century modern house by KUBE Architecture. Campion Hruby designed the fountain to add more drama to the already strong modernist connections with the garden. The water provides a visual connection outside, and the stepping stone path is a bridge to the garden. Read more: http://www.annapolishomemag.com/untroubled-waters/

In my last article, we discussed ways to pause and admire the nature that surrounds our homes. I have to admit that it really didn’t happen for me until very recently, after the rains and clouds gave way to a normal summer day on the Chesapeake Bay. With heat, humidity, reflecting sun, and the sounds of cicadas buzzing. I hit…

Architect Scarlett Breeding of Alt Breeding Associates and Raymond Gauthier of Lynbrook of Annapolis have professions that demand visual perfection. However, the success of each project depends on what is invisible: details. It is not an understatement to say that Breeding and Gauthier are obsessed with them. Read on.. .http://www.annapolishomemag.com/sunset-transformation-on-harness-creek/

The Chesapeake Bay is one of the most dynamic waterways in the world. It contains 11,684 miles of shoreline, more than the entire U.S. West Coast combined. Due to its location, shape and shallow depth, it contains a staggering diversity of organisms and a vastly intertwined web of life. It has drawn humans to its edges for food, water and…

The health of the Chesapeake Bay gets a low grade every year. In fact, conditions seem to be worsening. What makes preservation of the Bay environment so challenging? What more can we do about it? When answering these questions we must appreciate the Bay as a unique estuary with topographical and aquatic characteristics unlike any other. Read on at: http://www.annapolishomemag.com/an-estuary-like-no-other-the-chesapeake-bay/

“It gets better,” whispers architect Scarlett Breeding, touring a new home she designed near Annapolis. Surveying this virtually transparent steel, glass, and stone creation with sweeping water views,  a visitor wonders what could possibly get any better than this. Read more here: https://www.homeanddesign.com/2015/02/18/glass-house

Yves Balcer and his family spent two years living in this 1954 house in the Spring Valley neighborhood of Northwest Washington before he came to the conclusion it needed to be updated. After discussing the project with several architects, he initially planned to tear it down and build an entirely new house. The economic downturn tabled those plans. Read more…

Designed to respect both the scale of neighboring houses and the rhythm of the streetscape, the project aligns with adjacent houses while retaining the vast majority of mature trees and green space located between the street and the house.  Materials composing the exterior, which include stone, wood, and stucco, evoke traditional materials found throughout the neighborhood.  The house appears relatively…

Wayne Andersen has long been an architecture buff and admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright. So it should come as no surprise that the physician, author and co-founder of Take Shape For Life, a healthy living program, had a few ideas of his own when he set out to build a new home near Annapolis to share with wife Lori and…