Hinesburg Photos

We just received these new photos of the completed renovation at Hinesburg Community School!

The project was a 14,000 square foot renovation to the interior of a 1969 classroom wing.  The space has now been transformed into a welcoming, colorful and light-filled learning environment.  The project also increased the energy efficiency of the wing, and improved campus security by relocating the administration suite.  Additional features include enlarged public ADA compliant restrooms, a new Flex-space, a centralized nurses suite, and a new roof and sprinkler system.

Best of all, the students and teachers love the new space, evident by this thank-you card we received earlier this year.

Flashback Friday: the Church Street Marketplace

Today we are opening the archives to share some projects from the very early days of TruexCullins.  For this first ‘Flashback Friday’, we dug out some vintage photos from the making of the Church Street Marketplace.

This summer marks the 40-year anniversary of the first demonstration project on Church Street, when, in 1971, the busy street was temporarily closed to traffic to test the feasibility of a new pedestrian core for Burlington’s downtown.  The project was the brainchild of Bill Truex and a small group of Burlington’s civic leaders, and the success of the event led to the active planning and design of the project over the following decade.

Bill developed the first design concept in 1975.  A two-level scheme was considered in 1978, with open courtyards and bridges connecting two levels of outdoor retail space.

As originally conceived, the Church Street Marketplace was to be a four block pedestrian space anchored at the south end by City Hall and City Hall Park and at the north end by an iconic, early 1800’s Unitarian Church. The four blocks were the heart of commercial Burlington, with a diverse array of shops and second floor offices and apartments. The initial phase closed vehicular traffic for only the center two blocks, but the success of the space ultimately resulted in the closing of the north and south blocks as well. Several new parking structures were planned in conjunction with the Marketplace, and the transit loop provided public transportation to the center of Burlington.

Substantial completion of the marketplace occurred in 1981.  Today, 30 years later, the Marketplace continues as the civic and commercial center of Burlington. 

It is not without some irony that today we also celebrate the 41^st annual Earth Day.  While not explicitly an “environmental” project, the Marketplace is in actuality a fine example of environmentally sound design practices.  The space has effectively reinforced the public realm of the city and functions as an extremely active space day and night, throughout the year. Pedestrian traffic and amenities have been established, encouraging citizens, students and visitors to forgo their vehicles and move about on foot and by bicycle. The space is accessible to those in wheelchairs and children are free to roam and play amongst the rocks and seating areas.

In 1997, the National Trust for Historic Preservation granted its Great American Main Street Award to the Church Street Marketplace, and in 2008, the Marketplace was honored by the American Planning Association as one of the 10 Great Public Spaces in America.  Bill Truex’s vision for the project lives on, with its positive impact on the environment of our city.

Walk for COTS

Please consider joining us, and 1,500 other fellow community members, in the annual COTS Walk, a three-mile trek through the city of Burlington to raise funds and increase awareness about homelessness in our community.  This year’s walk is on Sunday, May 1^st, and begins at 2:00.

COTS, the Committee on Temporary Shelter, currently operates two overnight homeless shelters with over 50 beds; three family shelters that accommodate a total of 25 families at a time; and a drop-in daytime shelter, the COTS Daystation.  COTS also owns and operates a number of transitional and permanent housing facilities for low-income residents and homeless veterans.  Thousands of people have benefited from these services, with the shelters often running at full capacity.

There is still time to sign up and collect pledges for this year’s walk.  Any amount you raise is enough to get in and will count toward their overall goal of raising $175,000 to fund COTS shelters and services for the coming year.  All the information you need about the COTS Walk is available online, along with a link to the online registration form.

The walk takes about an hour and begins and ends at Battery Park.  Along the way, you can visit the COTS shelters, which will have their doors open for the general public to see how their money is spent.  TruexCullins has been a proud supporter of COTS in the past, and many of us on the staff will be out there again this year to show our support.  We hope you will too!

Dangerously Innovative

As most of you are probably aware, at TruexCullins, our work is spread across five distinct studios covering the disciplines of education, workplace, home, resort, and interiors.  But if you were to ask us which one was our primary focus, or even our most favored, I don't think we could point to any one project type.  Rather, I would say that our best project is the one where we Think Big.

This is why I am so drawn to this month's issue of Architectural Record.  It is the annual Record Houses issue, and it contains a collection of homes so innovative that they remind us how to dream.  The magazine also houses, between its covers, an entertaining war of words among the architectural press.

The editors open with an aggressive explanation of their design philosophy that differentiates them from their competitors, in the veiled form of responding to their reader comments and defending their project selection:

We have been asked how occupants perform such pedestrian duties as putting away groceries, making the bed, and cleaning.

(The message here is pretty clear: We are not Dwell Magazine, in which every photo features barefooted homeowners sipping coffee.  They go on...)

We have been advised to refer to Fine Homebuilding for guidance in the residential-project-selection process as well as for edification in terms of addressing our audience.

(I can't tell which I find more amusing: that the readers of Record made this suggestion, or that the Editors called them out for it.)

And we have been lambasted, again and again and again, for acknowledging houses with handrail-less stairs.

This brings us to the cover shot.  Thumbing their noses at their critics, the editors adorned this month's issue with an unabashedly dangerous house in Portugal by the Lisbon-based firm of Aires Mateus & Associates:

The building is a perfect icon of a house, an oversized monopoly gamepiece bathed in white plaster, roof and all.  And that's not a reflection you're looking at.  That's an open courtyard cut into the landscape: a square pit open to the sky that reveals the subterranean living spaces below.  The article matter-of-factly makes this hilarious mention:

The sunken courtyards at the four corners of the house currently have no railings or covering to prevent people from falling in.

Don't take me too literally here.  I don't profess that an open pit of death is appropriate (or even acceptable) for our Vermont landscape.  But in broader terms, this is the kind of thinking we like to start our favorite projects with: pushing the boundaries, thinking out of the box.  Yes, the realities of code compliance and budget constraints will eventually bear down on every project, but if we can start with a kernel of unencumbered inspiration, then we will be more likely to end up with a product that does more than just meet its owners' needs: it will exceed expectations and answer questions you never thought of asking in the first place.