Restaurant Week Part 3: Sugar Hill Inn

We love working on restaurant design projects that allow us to create environments that support and promote the enjoyment of food. Today’s project is in northern New Hampshire at the Sugar Hill Inn.

The Sugar Hill Inn is located near Franconia Notch state park and a number of New Hampshire ski areas, such as Bretton Woods, Cannon Mountain, and Loon. It is a charming, romantic getaway in a beautiful corner of the state and well worth the trip.

The Inn features an award-winning restaurant that offers a unique four-course meal in a romantic setting. As stated on the Sugar Hill website: “We have a European philosophy about dining. The table is yours for the evening. Take your time to enjoy the candlelight, cozy fire and amazing views with the combination of great food, wine and conversation … Our four course menu offers a well-balanced symphony of flavors and leads guests through a leisurely, romantic and artistic culinary experience.”

TruexCullins recently assisted the innkeepers of the Sugar Hill Inn with the renovations to their restaurant. The completely refurbished dining room includes wing-back chairs and a flexible central table. A custom casework display cabinet holds the Inn’s wine collection while screening the service area behind.

The restaurant is open to both Inn guests and the general public. For more info and to make reservations, visit sugarhillinn.com.

Restaurant Week Part 2: Amuse

This week we are sharing stories and photos of our recent Restaurant projects. Today we head to Essex, right outside of Burlington, where TruexCullins led the renovations to Amuse, the signature restaurant of the Essex Resort & Spa.

The Essex is the Burlington area’s only AAA Four Diamond hotel and has a strong focus on culinary excellence. Our work included the interior renovations of Amuse and the casual dining and bar area of the adjacent Tavern restaurant.

The central feature at Amuse is the chef’s table, a community table for 12 where guests have a front-row seat of the culinary action. With a clear view into the open kitchen, guests are able to watch as one of the master chefs prepares their meal. The experience is fitting for a facility that bills itself as a culinary resort. And if you are sufficiently inspired by the artistry in the kitchen, you can sign up for one of the cooking classes offered at the resort.

The rest of the dining room is given equal attention, with custom banquette seating, delicate glass fixtures, and a palette of off-white and natural wood. It is a classic New England interior for a classic Vermont restaurant.

Restaurant Week Part 1: Church and Main

The warm weather is upon us now, and the local restaurant scene is hopping. With the advent of the summer tourist season and the bevy of spring holidays and events, Al fresco dining has taken over Church Street and Vermonters are flocking to their favorite restaurants.

The culinary scene in the Burlington area has grown impressively in recent years. We are also lucky to have such a strong network of local farms that deliver fresh veggies, meats and cheeses to these restaurants on a daily basis.

TruexCullins Interiors is currently working on a new restaurant which will be opening on Church Street soon. Look for more info on that project this summer! For now, we thought we would take a look at a few of our other recent restaurant projects as we kick off the summer 2012 season. Call this our own "Restaurant Week", and we'll start with one of the newest gems on Church Street in Burlington: Church & Main.

For over 18 months now, Church & Main has been serving brunch, lunch and dinner at the bottom of Church Street, in the location of the former Smokejacks. TruexCullins Interiors designed this new dining room, with custom furnishings, artful lighting, and rich finishes. Being right around the corner from the Flynn, the place has a definite theater vibe. Accent lighting highlights local artwork, and heavy velvet curtains provide privacy for an intimate dining experience.

The food, of course, is on center stage here. The focus is on locally-sourced ingredients that are presented in creative and dynamic ways. Church & Main also has an extensive wine list and outdoor seating. Be sure to follow Church & Main on facebook or visit them online at www.churchandmainvt.com

PHOTOS BY NATALIE STULTZ & BETSY RICH PHOTOGRAPHY

Coming Events: Architecture and Design 2012

There are some exciting events coming up for our architecture and design community in Burlington and beyond. Here's a look ahead to some of them:

May 10: PKN-BTV Vol. 7
The next PechaKucha event is this Thursday at the Fleming Museum. If you've been to one of these before, you know that it is a fun, energetic night of wildly divergent and interesting presentations. This is volume 7 of the Burlington event, with another great line-up planned.

For the uninitiated, here's the official scoop: PechaKucha Night was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. It has turned into a massive celebration, with events happening in hundreds of cities around the world, inspiring creatives worldwide. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of conversation ("chit chat"), it rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds. It's a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.

More info at:  http://pecha-kucha.org/night/burlington-vt/

May 24: Bennington College Campus Tour
Our local AIA branches in Vermont, New Hampshire and Western Massachusetts are presenting an afternoon of presentations and tours at one of the country's highest rated colleges in terms of building and campus design.  Building tours on the Bennington College campus include projects by Tod Williams + Billie Tsien, Robertson Ward, Kyu Sung Woo, and Edward Larrabee Barnes.

The event occurs from 3:30 to 7:45pm and is good for 3 AIA HSW SD learning units. To register, visit: http://aiavtnhwm.eventbrite.com/  For more details, click to enlarge the poster below:

October 19-21: AIA New England Conference & Design Awards
Finally, we have a look forward to this fall's big event for AIA Vermont: the AIA New England Conference & Design Awards Program on Oct. 19-21, 2012 at the Hilton Hotel & Conference Center in Burlington. For us Burlingtonians, we are not only looking forward to the great workshops, lectures, and tours planned, but also to the opportunity to show off our award-winning city to our friends from across New England.

This will be the height of the fall foliage season in Vermont, so if you're planning on attending from out of state, make your hotel reservations now and lock in the conference rate.

For more details, visit: http://www.aiavt.org/aiane_conf/

Chelsea Street Ribbon Cutting

The Vermont Law School has just announced that U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, Gov. Peter Shumlin, Vermont Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Reiber and other officials will attend the ribbon cutting of VLS's new Center for Legal Services at 11:30 a.m., Friday, May 18.

The historic building at 190 Chelsea St. underwent a $3.5 million renovation to convert it into the new home for the South Royalton Legal Clinic and the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic. The two clinics provide millions of dollars of free legal services to needy families, community groups and others in the name of environmental stewardship, social justice and public interest.

The ribbon cutting and a tour of the building are free and open to the public.
 

You can find a brief description of our work on this project on our website.  You can also read about the new center for legal services and the story of the Legal Clinic in an article posted on the VLS website.

Hotel Vermont Under Construction

Many people have been asking us when construction will begin on Hotel Vermont. Well, the wait is over. After a winter hiatus, construction has resumed on the new hotel that will occupy lower Cherry Street in Burlington.

With the foundations completed last year, the crews from PC Construction are now on site moving this project forward. The building is designed by Smith Buckley Architects, with Interior Design by TruexCullins.  Our work on the interiors will continue throughout construction, as we develop the design for both the first floor public areas and the guestrooms above.

The hotel is on track to be open to guests in April 2013, so get ready for Hotel Vermont. To learn more about what you can look forward to, take a look back at last fall's announcement event:

Hotel Vermont: Announcement Event 09.21.11 from HotelVermont on Vimeo.

The Architecture of Happiness

posted by Matthew Bushey

There is one book that has been making the rounds at our office, adopted as a sort of unofficial guide to architectural style and beauty. It has been recommended at office gatherings, shared between coworkers, and gifted to interns when they leave our firm to prepare for the next stage in their design career.

This is The Architecture of Happiness, by the Swiss philosopher Alain de Botton.

The book is built on the premise that our moods are directly affected by the nature of the furniture, buildings and streets that surround us. In fact, we are influenced so much so by our built environment that it actually shapes us into the person we become.

You may recognize The Architecture of Happiness from the feature role it played in the 2009 boy-meets-girl movie 500 Days of Summer. The book was favored by the film’s protagonist, a young architect-in-training who eventually gives it to his elusive love interest, the quirky hipster played by Zooey Deschanel.

Just as these two were searching for true happiness in life, De Botton sets out on his own search in the pages of this book, exploring the history of architectural style and uncovering what it is that makes a building beautiful. The answer comes into focus about a third of the way in, when De Botton quotes the 19th-century French writer Stendhal in saying, “Beauty is the promise of happiness”:

His aphorism has the virtue of differentiating our love of beauty from an academic preoccupation with aesthetics, and integrating it instead with the qualities we need to prosper as whole human beings. If the search for happiness is the underlying quest of our lives, it seems only natural that it should simultaneously be the essential theme to which beauty alludes. … To call a work of architecture or design beautiful is to recognize it as a rendition of values critical to our flourishing, a transubstantiation of our individual ideals in a material medium.

This is the main argument of the book.  When we think of a building – or a chair, or a door, or a fence post – as beautiful, it is because we see in it the promise of happiness.  Or to put it another way: the promise of living the good life.

So how is a set of human ideals translated into the abstract artform of architecture? In the past, it was easy. You would follow one of the classical orders, with precisely tapered columns and carefully proportioned pediments. It was all thoroughly prescribed in the widely accepted books of architecture by masters such as Vitruvius, Alberti and Palladio.

Later, in the 20th century, the science of engineering eclipsed the master Architect. Minimalism and functionality ruled the day. A bridge was seen as beautiful if it made a graceful span with the lightest of materials, without any extraneous ornament or decoration. The prevailing belief was that for a structure to be honest, it would perform its mechanical functions efficiently. This philosophy was promoted by the Godfather of modernism, Le Corbusier, and epitomized by his most notable residence, Villa Savoye. The fact that the roof leaked incessantly and rendered the place inhabitable did little to affect the architect who famously professed that a building was a machine for living.

Le Corbusier, living room, Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1931

From here, De Botton presents a different perspective which is not restricted to the tenets of classicism or modernism. His argument is that the beauty of architecture manifests itself when a building communicates the idea of happiness. But how does this happen?

It may be anthropometric – when buildings exhibit an often literal representation of a living form – or psychological – when the human spirit itself is interpreted in bricks and mortar. Examples abound. The rounded arches of a Roman loggia convey serenity and poise, while the pointed arches of Gothic cathedral speak of ardour and intensity. “We can be moved by a column that meets a roof with grace, by worn stone steps that hint at wisdom and by a Georgian doorway that demonstrates playfulness and courtesy in its fanlight window.” De Botton goes on to describe the virtues of buildings that facilitate this conversation: order, balance, elegance and coherence.

Ducal Palace, Urbino

Thomas Leverton, fanlight window, Bedford Square, 1783

The Architecture of Happiness is organized as a sequence of ideas which eventually build into a recipe for reading our built environment. In the end, De Botton presents examples of contemporary architecture from Japan, Switzerland and the Netherlands that embody many of these characteristics. These buildings succeed in carrying the valuable lessons of the past while leading us into a “restless, global future”. They respond to the past without being nostalgic. They adapt to the local vernacular while exhibiting a universal appeal. And now I know why they make me happy.

Peter Zumthor, Gugalun House, Versam, 1994