The Raleigh Architecture Company (RACo) recently completed the design and construction of Trophy Brewing & Taproom at 656 Maywood Avenue in Raleigh following the success of the firm’s design for the smaller State of Beer bar and bottle shop that opened on Hillsborough Street in 2014.

For their new location, owners David Meeker, Chris Powers, David Lockwood, and Les Stewart asked RACo partners Craig Kerins, AIA, and Robby Johnston, AIA, to transform an existing steel-framed metal warehouse in a post-industrial area of the city into a 12,000-square-foot, 20-barrel production facility. The new facility includes an 8000-square-foot brewery fully visible from the 800-square-foot taproom, a barrel aging room, a keg cooler, office spaces, and a large outdoor patio.

In the brewery, three single-batch fermenters and three double-bath fermenters provide approximately 180 barrels of fermentation space. A reinforced foundation slab supports the weight of the equipment. The partners also had to enlarge the structure’s gas and water supply systems and install extensive floor drainage systems.

Continuous floor-to-ceiling storefront glazing provides a clear view inside the brewery from the taproom. The partners emphasized the visual connection with an angled furniture plan, a continuous solid white oak bar top between the taproom and brewery, and a custom-crafted white oak ceiling in the taproom, also applied on an angle.

According to Johnston, the exterior of the taproom is wrapped in natural white oak that folds into the taproom ceiling over the bar and in contrast with the room’s dark interior. Including the black-stained white oak bar base, the design scheme is “reminiscent of the exterior versus interior of wine and bourbon barrels used in the aging process: The exterior is left natural and the internal is charred to enhance flavor.” The natural and black-stained oak overlap at the 16-seat bar “where you experience the beer,” he added. The partners also specified metallic gold paint to recall the gold or bronze sheen of the facility’s namesake: trophy.

An aluminum-and-glass garage door and storefront glazing also make the brewery operation visible from the patio and the street.

Among other special features are polished concrete floors in taproom, a custom-designed terrazzo tap surround, and custom-designed steel water jet sleeves.

The architect of record for Trophy Brewing & Taproom is David Mauer with RACo serving as design architect and The Raleigh Construction Company as contractor.

AIA Triangle and NC Modernist Houses tour-goers discovered Raleigh Architecture Co.’s innovative urban infill houses in an old neighborhood.

“Hungry Neck,” an old, established neighborhood just east of Downtown Raleigh, is not an expected destination for homes tours. A mixed-use neighborhood, most of the houses there were built between 1900 and 1940 and many of those are in disrepair.

However, two recent homes tours – the Triangle section of the American Institute of Architects’ (AIA Triangle) Residential Tour on October 11th and North Carolina Modernist Houses’ (NCMH) annual “ModaPalooza Tour” of strictly Modernist houses on October 17 – brought hundreds of surprised participants to the 500 block of East Edenton Street. There they discovered two Modernist urban-infill houses designed and built by Craig Kerins, AIA, and Robby Johnston, AIA, of theRaleigh Architecture Company (RACo).

At 554 and 556 East Edenton Street, these houses are actually two of five RACo-designed Modernist houses that will soon grace the Hungry Neck neighborhood within a block of each other. One across the street, the Hungry Neck house at 562 New Bern Avenue, is under construction. (The NCMH group got a sneak-peak inside.) Next door to the Hungry Neck house, the Floyd house at 558 New Bern is just a foundation at the moment, as is the fifth project, the Powers house at 567 New Bern.

“We’re very committed to downtown Raleigh,” said architect Robby Johnston, AIA, who co-owns the two-year-old design/build firm with his partner, architect Craig Kerins, AIA. “The name of our firm reflects that and we maintain both our office and shop under one roof in the Warehouse District. We’re very interested in building community in this neighborhood, which is really a delightful place where people on porches and walking down the sidewalk interact all the time.”

Johnston and Kerins also live in or near the downtown district. In fact, 554 Edenton is Johnston’s private residence, which he shares with his wife and two young daughters. Nabarun Dasgupta and Roxanne Saucier own the house next door with son Ishan.

How did RACo manage to get all five commissions? “We created the first two, the Edenton homes, by purchasing both properties and preparing a developmentproforma to court prospective clients,” Johnston explained. “Once these took shape the phone began ringing with interest not only in the area but also in the kind of architecture we were offering. Then we began to create relationships between our clients and prospective landowners and served as purchase advisors/consultants based on our institutional knowledge of the actual value of building in this area.”

Johnston calls the two completed houses on the recent tours “paternal twins.” Architecturally, they share certain similarities, he explained, including North Carolina cypress siding, window style, thin shed roofs, and a narrow footprint – yet maintain individual identities through variations in form and materials. They also share a green space/courtyard since the compact lots didn’t allow for individual side yards, as well as upper-level outdoor spaces: Johnston’s 1800-square-foot house features a second-floor terrace while the 2100-square-foot Dasgupta-Saucier house features a third-story terrace.

The houses differ in additional exterior materials. Gray slate from a demolished house in nearby Historic Brooklyn neighborhood became siding for 554 Edenton. The Corten steel that wraps around 556’s upper level is transforming from a raw steel finish to a uniform, intentional patina as it acclimates to is downtown Raleigh surroundings.

Since Kerins and Johnston knew they were introducing Modernist, sustainable residential design to this old urban neighborhood, they made a concerted effort to recall architectural elements from the existing structures. Front porches, created and shaded by cantilevered upper forms, “pay tribute to the importance of ‘public’ outdoor space in these and all historic Southern homes,” Kerins noted. The houses address the sidewalk at the same distance as neighboring houses and floor-to-ceiling windows on the lower levels engage the neighborhood while high windows on the upper levels provide privacy for the personal spaces there.

To ensure an abundance of natural light in these slim houses, RACo designed open floor plans for both with double-height cores capped by large skylights. RACo fabricated open steel staircases in each to accommodate vertical circulation. At 556 Edenton, the staircase is a bold element within the space.

The NCMH “ModaPalooze” group also visited RACo’s renovation of the Larry Wheeler-Don Doskey house in Chapel Hill.