Richard Groves Architect

Someone once said “Architecture should be both didactic and delightful.” I have always found this premise to be particularly insightful, especially for residential architecture. One of the most fundamental truths at work in all good architecture is that it has always been more about the making of “place” than the making of a building. This concept and how well it has been executed is the lens through which we view all of architectural history. Buildings as diverse as the Parthenon, Monticello and Falling Water give us a unique understanding of this idea as well as their own cultural moment in time. The practice of residential architecture is the study of how to delineate our own innate sense of “place” throughout the project at a multiple of scales. How a building accomplishes this within the larger landscape differs from how this is achieved within the spacial framework of rooms that will become one’s home. Buildings will usually seek to establish this premise through their position, orientation, use of unique landscape features and topography, as well as the entrance and arrival sequence developed in their overall site design. Rooms should try and convey their own identity and sense of “place” within the whole while simultaneously dovetailing the building to the landscape. They are most successful when they initiate a dialogue of light, intimacy and function built around the individual lives of their inhabitants, so as to imprint a more meaningful human scale on the home. I suppose the delightful part comes for both the client and the architect when they realize the home they have created together has been able to facilitate this conversation between a family’s life together and their surroundings. Since founding my architectural practice in 1987, I have focused exclusively on residential architecture and design. Although most of my work has been in Monmouth County, New Jersey, I have recently completed a new home in Charlotte, North Carolina – the third residential project I have undertaken for the same client. While I have over thirty years’ experience across a broad range of building types and historical styles, what has remained at the core of my practice is trying to find that resonance between architecture and the lives of the people I work for. If you are considering a new home or alteration and would like to engage in a creative and collaborative process with your architect, I would be very interested in hearing from you.