Stephen Tilly, Architect takes a collaborative, studio approach to a wide variety of projects, from regional planning to rain gardens. We are architects, historic preservation specialists and landscape designers; we are both specialists and generalists. Our core mission is to design, rehabilitate and preserve environments that bring delight, and will continue to do so for generations.
Our studio provides a full scope of services: feasibility and zoning studies, architectural design, historic preservation, interior design and furnishings, site planning, landscape and garden design. We also participate in large scale planning and urban design projects. Based in the Hudson Valley, we focus on the tri-state region. The firm’s completed projects and consulting work, however, range from the Northeast to the South and Midwest.
Our environmental ethic compels the integration of buildings and landscapes from earliest conception. The values of sustainability guide decisions from site plan to plumbing specifications. Stephen Tilly's focus on renewable energy in the 1970's has broadened into a concern for the environmental and public health consequences of development and architectural design decisions. We and our consultants are able to bring the latest information about energy, environmental and health issues to bear on proposed construction projects during the early design stages. In our design for the home of a college environmental studies program, we demonstrate a wide array of sustainable approaches to site and construction. We have designed a new “green” senior community and mixed use structures, and we are greening existing government buildings as we adapt them for new uses. We see sustainability as good design, not a fad or a point system.
Our related principal focus is adaptive reuse, rehabilitation and preservation. We understand that the reuse and greening of existing buildings is our single most powerful avenue to a more sustainable future, as underlined by the UN Panel on Climate Change. We have conducted historic structure and landscape studies, and prepared drawings and specifications for historic properties, working with local, state and Federal agencies. As an example, we merged sustainability and preservation in the concept and execution of the public library for the Village of Irvington, New York. The firm shaped the political and development process for the recycling of an historic factory and office complex into a mixed use building containing the Village's new public library on the ground floor under 22 units of low income housing. That project has received recognition from organizations such as the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association, the Preservation League of New York State, and the American Institute of Architects.
Our studio location reflects and shapes our attitude towards our work. Our own office is a reworking and restoration of a Medieval Revival theater and associated nineteenth century buildings. The result of our work as developer, architect and general contractor is a 5,000 square foot, mixed use complex including design studio and apartments in the village center. We have organized our office to maintain a personal, craftsman-like connection throughout the course of design and construction. We listen carefully to clients; we appreciate traditions but look at each project freshly in its own right; and we stay at the cutting edge of twenty-first-century building technology and design.
