Fantasy Into Reality

SeptemberOctober 2008
Industry News

Fantasy Into Reality
Small Project Award Winner Brings Fantasy Into Reality

West Chester, Pa.-based Archer & Buchanan Architecture, Ltd., has won a 2008 Small Project Award from the American Institute of Architects (AIA). The firm was one of just 14 recipients this year out of 158 competing projects.

Archer & Buchanan’s “Butterfly Window” project won in the Small Project Objects category. The ‘butterfly’ window was conceived, for a private museum, from some of J.R.R. Tolkien’s sketches and verbal descriptions of the Hobbit’s propensity to design windows that frame beautiful views while blending the materials and forms of wall, window and roof into a balanced composition: A marriage of form and function, according to the firm.

The tile roof and the supporting stone wall visually envelop the circular window that dictates their form. The window is crafted of solid mahogany with forged iron hardware. The semicircular, operable sashes are center hinged. Like butterfly wings, Archer & Buchanan says, they are delicate yet strong, beautiful yet functional. MD