End of Year Traditions.
One of my favorite days of the working year is shaping up to be the day I deliver holiday gifts to our clients. The gift is a way of showing clients that I appreciate their patronage and trust in what can be very trying and expensive process. With the help of my team here it’s nice to put together a token that shows my gratitude. It’s becoming a tradition to hand deliver many of these in the days leading up to Christmas and a nice bonus is that I get a chance to check in on projects along the way!
This year deliveries happened on the 23rd and started with a trip to a new project in Weston. It’s meant to be an expansion of kids bedrooms, reconfiguring of the primary suite and an update to the front façade, but at the moment design is just beginning and will really take off in 2026, so more on that one later.
From there I went into Newton Highlands to meet with the builder to review existing framing now that demolition has begun and the existing walls and floors are open. There are a lot of mysteries to be seen here and the structural engineer will be taking a look next week to see if we need to adjust their design to accommodate the notched floor joists! Here are some current images along with the approved interior layout.
Up next was a face-to-face meeting with a landscape architecture team that I’m working with to create a new office space in a building they own. The building is an 1850s-era home that includes a subterranean vault whose purpose we haven’t yet ascertained and was converted to offices and expanded on in the 1980s and is in need of an update to the finishes and the layout so that it can serve a single tenant rather than the four it currently does. The occasion was our second design meeting and working with a client in a design-adjacent field has been very educational. Below are existing photos along with an early rendering of a typical principals office.
It was over to Needham after that for a look at a project that is expanding as the family grows - they had a son born this September which combined with the long stays of out-of-town in-laws necessitated the need for more space. I’m looking forward to this one wrapping up early next year, see below for the current and before photos.
After that I got to see three projects on one block, which is a real treat as an architect. Two of them had interior work ongoing and the owners weren’t home so I left the gift on their doorstep without getting photos, but the third was looking very nice. There’s hopefully 2 months to go on their construction and finishes are well underway at this point and I was happy to see the exterior color scheme in place for the first time. Here’s the current state of the house along with the beginning of the year and the start of design.
Of course I can’t hand deliver all of the gifts - some clients are way out of town (Maryland!) and it’s not practical, so about 10 gifts went out in the mail, including to some of our favorite collaborators. Now HQ is in standby mode until the New Year and we’re getting some rest and time for family connection, which I hope you all are too.
