tips from a winner

When my third year professor proposed the idea of entering the JELD-WEN competition, I was immediately intrigued. I had seen posters throughout our building advertising it, but thought that I would never have time to take on another project on top of the work I already had. Fortunately for me, I was given two weeks to design the door. The prompt for the competition was taken one step further by my professor and it became a “replacement” door for a famous building that we could choose from a list he created.

I chose the Jacobs House by Frank Lloyd Wright because his Usonian architecture had always interested me, and I thought that a very unique and interesting door could result from this building. The ability to open individual doors stemmed from two ideas: the classic Dutch style door, and all the French doors and clerestory windows in the Jacobs house that were designed to open for ventilation and increase in space. I also thought that this would allow the user many different options in utilizing what is often seen as a “standard” architectural element, and enjoy the variation that results. The size and number of individual doors came from the measurements of the board and batten wall system. The frames were the “battens” and the glass the “boards.” The wood colors also came from the natural cypress that Wright used for the exterior.

The overall result pleased me: it did not compete with the existing building and integrated itself nicely into the façade, yet at the same time was its own entity and did not rely on the building to be a good door.

Nathan T. Williams
Virginia Tech
4th year Architecture major studying abroad in Switzerland