Boston-based architect and seasonal Chilmark resident Keith Moskow, who started his career building houses with Vineyard carpenter Herbert Hancock during summer breaks from college, wants to see more architecture students getting their hands dirty on the job.
“As architects, we’re usually up in our heads,” Mr. Moskow told the Gazette by phone from Mexico, where he was working on a project last week. “Many, many students enter the profession without having built anything.”
That’s why Mr. Moskow and his business partner Robert Linn, who have won scores of awards for residential design with their firm Moskow Linn Architects, started a hands-on summer workshop they call Studio North.
The week-long session, taking place in Chilmark this year, is limited to 10 architecture students, who will take a simple project from concept through construction using a kit of standard parts including wood, metal and translucent fiberglass.
“It’s relatively easy, especially on the computer, to design very complex structures, but there’s something to be said about seeing how they really go together,” Mr. Moskow said. “There’s something to be said for actually banging nails, sweating in the field, lifting timbers (and) putting things together.”
Studio North got its start on land Mr. Moskow owns in Vermont, where for several summers the student groups designed and built small structures that harmonize with the surrounding environment. They include a pavilion, lined with white birch trunks, offering a meditation space in the woods; a “chicken chapel” to house a flock of hens; and a consumable sugar shack, its walls made of wood to feed the sap fire for maple sugaring as spring weather warms outside.
“We don’t know what we’re going to build until we see the whole student group,” Mr. Moskow said. “We all sit down and brainstorm together. It’s very, very fast.”
The design inspiration behind Studio North came from the partners’ widely-praised Swamp Hut in Newton. Built in 2008 as a weekend getaway for their young families, the huts consist of four tent-like, single-room cabins made of fiberglass and wood, created on a platform that seems to float above the marshy land.
“Of all the projects we’ve done, it has been the most published,” Mr. Moskow said, citing coverage in 14 languages.
Mr. Moskow uses many of the same materials in his proposed replacement for the Owen Park bandstand in Vineyard Haven, which was moved to the back burner after some residents complained about the design and the fiberglass.
“I put that on the decade-project list,” he said. “Some projects take a long, long time.”
A seasonal Islander since childhood, when his parents rented a home in Chilmark, Mr. Moskow cut fish at Poole’s before working for Mr. Hancock and, later, the Vineyard firm that would become Hutker Architects.
Beginning in the 1990s, he has designed numerous houses on the Island — several of which have won professional awards — and become a Chilmark homeowner himself.
“It’s nice to have that connectivity,” said Mr. Moskow, whose off-season home is in Cohasset.
Participants in this year’s Studio North will need to find their own lodgings for the week, in addition to the $1,100 tuition fee.
“The income we receive goes primarily to materials and the rest to really good meals that we all have together,” Mr. Moskow said. “It’s not a money making effort...It’s a way to sort of pass on the knowledge to the next generation, and remind ourselves of what we do as architects — designing things to be built.”
Enrollment is open until May 4 for the Studio North in Chilmark program, which runs June 2 to June 8. More information is posted at moskowlinn.com/studio-north/.
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