(L) Melissa Brillhart and (R) Jacob Brillhart Image courtesy of Brillhart Architecture

Jacob and Mellisa Brillhart have established their place in South Florida's architectural history through their emphasis on vernacular building principles. Tapping into the area's roots of Tropical Modernism, the duo emphasize the importance of construction methodology in designing sustainable structures for hot and humid climates. The studio's design process utilizes a blend of analog and digital techniques, all while incorporating natural materials found within Florida's landscape.

For this week's Studio Snapshot, the founders of Brillhart Architecture share the importance of uncovering what makes up the emotional qualities of a space. By reflecting on their built works, the two discuss the importance of drawing inspiration from their surroundings and Florida's vernacular architecture.  

How many people are in your practice?

4 full time, with 2 ongoing interns.

Why were you originally motivated to start your own practice? 

I always admired one of my professors at Tulane, Errol Barron. He seemed to have the perfect professional balance – teaching and running his own office – marrying research with practice. I always wanted to do that. I started working at University of Miami School of Architecture in 2004 and then opened my own office a couple of years after. 

What hurdles have you come across?

Miami is a challenging place to get a project built, just in terms of the bureaucracy. A project that might take 5 months to design and permit in another state can take up to a year in South Florida, given the number of professionals that have to be involved; the number of drawings required by the City; conflicting code requirements between agency departments that have to be negotiated and resolved; etc. It takes an incredible amount of patience from the client and architect.

Is scaling up a goal or would you like to maintain the size of your practice? 

We would like to stay relatively small so that we can stay intimately involved in the process.

What are the benefits of having your own practice? And staying small? 

We get to pick and choose which projects we want to work on and also test out our ideas. When we first set out we were interested in form, but
structure, materiality; vernacular building strategies; and landscape have also been important design drivers in our work. Now that the office has grown and we have built work, we are much more cognizant of and responsive to the specific spatial and atmospheric qualities in architecture that move or affect us emotionally. We are less distracted by form and more interested in how spaces feel – and the “chemistry” of space – meaning how different materials make us feel; what history and memory and patina bring to a place; the importance of lightness, darkness and shadow; and so on. In staying small, we’ve been able to focus on some very small projects that we’ve built ourselves, including a cabin in the Bahamas. In this project, we have started to incorporate design aspects that reflect our growing interests in the emotional qualities of space. We can then hopefully use this project as a way to get our ideas out there. 

Based in Florida, how does the area shape/influence your work? What is something people may not know about Florida's architectural history?

Given the concrete industry in Miami’s backyard, South Florida has developed an almost relentless adherence to building in concrete. There is an unfounded, albeit pervasive, belief that the costs associated with building a residential project using other structural systems would be exorbitant; that there isn’t enough skilled labor on hand to build such projects, and so on. Ironically, we have old models, dating back to the 1950s and ‘60s, of structures made of concrete, wood, steel, and hybrid systems. Simple, rational, efficient, cost-effective buildings that celebrate the tropics, these designs lend feasible and innovative alternatives for Miami’s future buildings. We studied South Florida’s post-war architects—such as Alfred Browning Parker, Rufis Nims, Robert Bradford Browne, Mark Hampton, Paul Rudolf and Ralph Twitchell, William Morgan, Donald Singer, Gene Leedy, and others, when designing our own house and in subsequent projects as well.

These architects gave birth to a tropical modern school of thought and developed their own regional interpretations of the International Style by turning to local landscape, climate, and materials to inform their designs. In an era of optimism and experimentation, these architects married building traditions with passive systems, new technologies, and innovative construction techniques. Emphasis on construction methodology was central to their work and became a model for sustainable design in the tropics. In that same spirit, we try to work with a range of different materials and develop innovative construction assemblies that will redefine the relationship between the building, those who live there, and the immediate surroundings – with the goal of creating more natural environments for living.

Do you have a favorite project? Completed or in progress.

Our house has worked out wonderfully. We are currently working on a 5,000 sf house in Harbor Island, Bahamas that we are very excited about as well. It is a complex of buildings that overlook the ocean.

The Brillhart House is a beautiful blend of Florida's design history and vernacular architecture. Can you share with us a little more about the project and its process?

The design for our house relies on a back-to-the-basics approach – specifically studying old architectural models that care about good form but are also good for something. Each design decision was organized around four central questions that challenge the culture for building big: what is necessary; how can we minimize our impact on the earth; how do we respect the context of the neighborhood; and what can we really build?Some answers came from a place with which we are already intimately familiar – the seemingly forgotten American Vernacular, and more specifically, the Dog Trot, which for well over a century, has been a dominant image representing Florida Cracker architecture. The small, simple, and practical building is both modest and rich in cultural meaning. It attempts to maximize efficiency, space, and energy; relies on vernacular building materials; and celebrates the balmy breezes.

The principles of Tropical Modernism also offered direction. The architects building in South Florida’s postwar period turned to local landscape, climate and materials to inform their designs, marrying building traditions with passive systems, new technologies, and innovative construction techniques. In that same spirit, we sought an alternative to the use of concrete and concrete only, instead exploring steel and glass as the superstructure. As a result, we wasted fewer materials, simplified the assembly, and reduced the cost and time of construction, all the while allowing for increased cross ventilation and a heightened sense of living within the landscape.

Elevated five feet off the ground, the project includes 100 feet of uninterrupted glass – 50 feet spanning the full length of both the front and back sides of the house, with four sets of sliding glass doors that allow the house to be entirely open when desired. The house also includes 800 square feet of outdoor living space, with both front and back porches and shutters along the front façade for added privacy and protection against the elements.

These details, and the position of the house, which is at the center of a 330-foot long lot, allow the house to meld seamlessly with the site’s dense and lush native landscaping. With interior and exterior spaces fused together, the experience is that of a floating tropical refuge. We were also the general contractors on this project, building most of it ourselves. I think the act of building it has greatly furthered our appreciation for making and material compatibility and an understanding of joinery and detailing – and the material presence of a place.

Jacob, your project "Drawings of the South" focuses on the landscapes of the South and the details of these spaces. How does your drawing/sketching process influence your work? 

Travel drawing also serves as a source of inspiration and spring point for design. After completing my masters from Columbia University, I went on a series of European road trips, using Le Corbusier’s (Swiss-French architect, 1887 –1965) early sketchbooks as my sole travel guides. I was studying how his drawings informed his design work and was also making my own drawings of the same places Le Corbusier documented - 90 years earlier. Since that time I have made more than 700 paintings, sketches and notes of architectural details, maps, people, buildings, objects, and urban spaces in cities around the world. This research has taught me “to see” the persistencies in architecture (i.e. those qualities that do not change), such as form, mass, profile, light, shadow, scale, and proportion – all vital components that give character and quality to buildings. In physically drawing what I see in situ, I have also learned to analyze buildings, piece by piece, to understand their material nature and construction assemblies and how they are integrated: observing the thicknesses of each material; the details of how they are cut, fastened, and connected; whether the structure is revealed or hidden; and what they express tectonically.

Do they add an extra element to your design vision?

This working knowledge of constant architectural principles also allows us to explore those other aspects of architecture that do change – such as new technologies, materials, fabrication techniques, construction assemblies, and representational media – aspects that make architecture present and transformative. As of late, I’ve been interested in the connection of American Painting and architecture...its sort of been slow cooking for a long time Starting at the age of 5 I was dragged by my parents though every museum in the northeast countless times and grew up looking at Andrew Wyeth, Whistler, and Winslow Homer. Their work resonated with me...I believed them; they seemed honest, authentic, natural and familiar. In revisiting them,

I’ve come to realize that their paintings of landscapes, buildings and interiors are realizations of a common collection of elements that create an emotional connection for me. In both the subject’s material making and in the actual representation of the subject, they all convey a sense of history, place and time, texture, temperature, weather, and place within the landscape. I have started to assemble a list of what I call ingredients that make up the “chemistry of space.” -- these are common elements that I have mined out of early American paintings as well as other older buildings and contemporary spaces. I have used those ingredients to start making new paintings and drawings as a way to explore these more ephemeral qualities of space – aspects that I might have overlooked at an earlier time in my life, when I was mostly focused on the subject itself and its formal constructions and details. I have been thinking -- how can we draw and paint spaces that will thus inform future design work that conjures such atmospheres and emotions? Ultimately - We hope that these tools will help move the work past an aesthetic that is solely about formal expression into a more dynamic architecture.

Discussions have been made over the importance of architectural drawings and its relevance in an increasingly digital world. Can you talk about your "hybrid design process" of analog and digital techniques?

We place heavy emphasis on process as a means of furthering creativity and invention. We try to run each of the projects through a matrix of different digital and analog media lenses as we go, including painting, hand drawing, physical models and mock-ups as well as cad, 3D computer models and renderings. We strongly believe this fusing of media provides a larger, more creative palette from which to work.

If you could describe your practice in three words what would they be? 

Rigorous, calibrated, experimental.