ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, November 23, 1995                   TAG: 9511240027
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: HOLIDAY 
SOURCE: MAG POFF STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium


AREA BUILDINGS DRAW PRAISE OF STATE ARCHITECTS

A hillside home in Montgomery County has been cited as one of the state's best new architectural works in the annual competition of the Virginia Society of the American Institute of Architects.

The award-winning home is the creation of Joe Mashburn, a Blacksburg architect and associate professor at Virginia Tech, and his wife, Julia Mashburn, whose degree is in art and interior design. The house they designed is their own home.

Also, merit awards went to two other buildings in the region: Forest Middle School in Bedford County, designed by Sherertz Franklin Crawford Shaffner Inc. of Roanoke, and the Martin Science Center at Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, designed by VMDO Architects of Charlottesville.

The society gave two honors awards and four merit awards among 75 entries.

Joe Mashburn said the house, which has two bedrooms, a computer room and other living space, was designed it to fit the contours of their hillside property.

Situated on a rocky, 6-acre site looking east across a valley, the long, narrow house is a series of terraces that step laterally up the slope. Interior spaces are shaped by the relationship of the stepped floor to the continuously sloped roof, the society said.

Views of the mountains to the east and the desire to face the house southward for sunlight and solar warmth prompted the Mashburns to place main living spaces diagonally toward the view. Radiant heating is provided directly by the concrete floor slab through which hot water circulates.

The choice of materials - including corrugated galvanized steel and fiberglass roofing and siding, light wood platform framing and double-glazed aluminum doors and windows - was governed by such considerations as speed of construction, economy, low maintenance and durability.

One of the competition jurors, architect Laurie Hawkinson of New York, called the house "very beautiful and quite severe. The simplicity of the lines is a strong gesture to the site. The roof-wall details, the windows, the interiors are all simply detailed to support and strengthen the overall concept."

Forest Middle School also recently won a first-place award for middle school design from the Virginia School Boards Association and the Virginia Association of School Superintendents.

The 900-student school is designed to accommodate a team-teaching concept by clustering classrooms. A wing of the building is dedicated to each grade level to foster the sense of a school within a school.

The library-media center is centrally located and physically separated from the classrooms. The gymnasium and cafetorium are located for easy access during after-school hours.

The society's jury said Forest Middle School was the best among several schools submitted for consideration. Juror Tod Williams, also a New York architect, said the interiors demonstrate a good sense of materials and use.

The Martin Science Center project involved the complete renovation of laboratory and classroom spaces inside the five-story building. The primary interior materials are cherry paneling, slate and anodized aluminum.

The building's 26 laboratories were custom designed to meet specific instructional and research needs. Major modifications to the building systems allowed intensive laboratory use.



 by CNB