Waverly

Pennsylvania

 
Peter and Sally Bohlin's small family compound in rural Pennsylvania is composed of adjacent cottages and several smaller related structures. Employing modest materials, soft modernist details, and indigenous landscape, the architect transformed the land and the existing buildings, preserving their essential natures and making a calm, evocative place.

An entry court has been formed by the parallel sides of the houses, a stone walkway bordered by a trellis, and a new dry-laid Pennsylvania stone wall that buffers the buildings from the road.

The stone tongue of the walkway forms a damlike edge for a new pond that reaches from the court through an existing wooded area to a large open field. A cantilevered slab of wood extends from the new face of the renovated guesthouse out over the pond pointing to a field and distant forest. Lying in the tall grasses of the field and hidden beyond the main house's gardens is a slim seventy-five-foot pool bordered with local bluestone.

In the main house, a new room with the feel of a porch looks into a grove of tightly spaced birches. Familiar details -- a quintessential stair, a hall of closet doors, the diagonal light in the gridded bubbles of bay windows and walls of books -- make floating spaces that comfort and enable.

Waverly reminds us of home -- a chimney against the sky, windblown fields, remembered northern forests, a slash of pool, memories of frog ponds from childhood, and distilled images of buildings.

Awards

2004 Merit Award for Design
Residential Architect
2003 Honor Award for a Small Project
AIA Northeastern Pennsylvania
2002 Citation Award for Excellence in Architectural Design
AIA Pennsylvania
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