“Our vision was a modern mountain home where clean lines and the raw materials of the engineered structure were part of the finished palette of the home. The black steel I-beam spans the width of the home west to east, and supports the Douglas fir glulam timber frame rafters,” says Pete Heintzelman, Method Architecture Studio architect and homeowner.

The blending of these disparate materials is the foundation of a low lying, high volume modern mountain home in Vermont. Eschewing the more traditional elements of a timber frame, the house’s structure deftly mixes light large scale industrial elements with the softer biophilic feel of natural wood, seamlessly marring different genres of design into a unified building.

“My favorite materials to work with are exposed wood and steel. I knew from the beginning that we were going to do a timber frame or exposed structural elements,” says Heintzelman. “I love the color of Douglas fir with its clear coated richness, and how you can interact metal with it.” 

These interactions play together throughout the home providing a contrast between the rustic and the modernized, the sophisticated and unrefined.

On a private drive just above the shoreline of Canandaigua Lake, the New Energy Works timber frame team collaborated with Grossi Construction on the raising of an expansive multi-use barn. 

Architect Dan Pieters came to the New Energy Works team with, “the initial architecture and schematic design and then we drove the sizing, the structure and the finite dimensions of it.” says New Energy Works designer Bethany Schaertl. There was a lot of coordination back and forth between our team, Dan Pieters, and Grossi construction to make sure all the moving parts were working toward the same goal.

“It was mainly designed for a car barn, and a little bit of utility stuff, and the second floor is going to be a Yoga studio and office, says Steve Grossi of Louis J. Grossi Construction, Inc. “You could call it multi-use, but the main purpose is for vehicles.”

Five years earlier Grossi had built the homeowners current living quarters just down the private drive from the barn. “Their house is conventionally framed with a few timber elements, says Grossi. “We knew that we wanted to incorporate some of those timber features from the house into the barn.” In the end, the entire barn became a fully structurally supported timber frame.

On the morning of the raising, efficiency and precision were the order of the day as our timber frame team moved quickly around the property as one unit, moving the heavy Douglas fir trusses weightlessly through the air. The darkened timbers were carefully put into place, lending the biophilic bones to the two-story barn structure. 

“Premier Architectural Products reached out to us with a design for a table that they had taken to a few different woodshops who were unwilling or not capable of taking on as a project,” says Josh Savoir Design Engineer for NEWwoodworks. “So, we said yes. We weren’t exactly sure how we were going to do it, but we worked through it and figured it out.”

The idea was for an approximately 9’ foot long and 3” thick community table with a central bend, shaped like a boomerang. With two extended wings, the table can comfortably seat a family of 10 people and will be a focal point of its new home in a Washington, D.C. restaurant. The table’s design features a large number of patterns and detail and incorporates the restaurant’s logo in a circle at its apex.

“Originally the architect wanted to do the table in one species with very specific colors,” says Savoir. “They wanted to stain separate colors to differentiate the patterns that were in the table. There were good discussions on our part and a lot of great ideas were contributed by Rob. (Rob D’Alessandro, who heads up our NEWwoodworks team) With the amount of detail in the piece, for us, it made the most sense that this should be an inlay project.”

As an alternative to using paints or stains our team specifically picked various species of wood that would fit the designer’s intent. “With a veneer, you put it down, cut out the shapes you need, and put the inlay in. So, we decided to do that with three types of wood that would match the colors they wanted for the table,” says Savoir. We ended up with walnut as the main veneer, wenge as the accent, and oak as the border.

“With inlays you are able to scrape and sand flush,” says Savoir. You have very fine lines between the grain directions and the different varieties of wood. So, the colors are very defined and if you were to use stain it would bleed. Stains soak into wood, so inlays are the best way to go.”