Architects don’t often get to design a new building for their alma mater. Yet Thomas Phifer, based in New York City, showed it’s possible to go home again—with success.
As you approach Thomas Phifer and Partners’ house in upstate New York, the long, steep climb up a winding country road ends not with a dramatic structure, nor a sweeping panorama; its denouement is merely a prelude to the multifaceted spatial sequence to come.
You can almost hear the “Pomp and Circumstance March” as you stroll Rice University’s bucolic, 285-acre campus nestled in the heart of Houston, shielded from the hubbub of the city’s six-lane freeways and endless strip development.
For five years, Manhattan residents Cristina Grajales and Isabelle Kirshner rented a rustic former hunting cabin in Dutchess County, New York, for weekend getaways.