pod is searching for an Architect with 1-2 years’ experience. Candidates should have a sensitivity to graphics, design, and modeling, as well as a developing foundation in code research.
We are always interested in talented people who would like to join our multi-disciplined team as we pursue a high standard of design excellence. Team members must be creative, enthusiastic professionals who would thrive on working within, and learning from, a cohesive group of designers with various areas of expertise. (The whole is greater than its parts.) To apply, e-mail us your resume at doug@podand.com
By Mike Welton, editor
Downtown Durham, in its never-ending quest to be the next Brooklyn, now has a new distillery.
It’s called Liberty & Plenty. It specializes in vodka and gin, with an eye toward experimenting with its own whiskies.
Its tasting room was designed by a pair of designers at pod architecture + design. They’ve got experience at this sort of thing, with the design of Rabbit Hole Distillery in Louisville back in 2018.
Here, they were challenged by owner Tina Williford to squeeze that tasting room into 2,800 square feet of existing space.. READ MORE
In a ceremony in Cincinnati, Ohio, last week, Doug Pierson, AIA, and Youn Choi, partners at pod architecture + design (pod a+d) in Chapel Hill, NC, received their second design award for Rabbit Hole Distillery, the metal, glass, and blackened wood structure they designed in downtown Louisville, KY, that the president of the Kentucky Distillers Association called “a modern monument to our historic industry.”
Earlier this year, pod a+d’s distillery design claimed the top “Grand Award” honor in Metal Construction News’ annual awards program.
The Kentucky chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) presented its awards during the AIA Ohio Valley Region’s “Celebrating Design Awards Luncheon” on September 19 at the Hilton Netherlands Plaza in Cincinnati.
The awards jury praised the new distillery as “an exuberant extension of industrial language with playful materiality. There is a legible and contemporary expression of both corporate identity and the process of making at various scales. In this way, the process of production becomes part of the architecture.”
According to Pierson and Choi, the design embraced the strategy “form follows process” as they allowed the building to take shape in direct response to the bourbon production process it houses.
The building’s “strong relationship to the street” impressed the jurors as well.
For more information on Rabbit Hole Distillery, visit www.rabbitholedistillery.com.
The designers’ own home wins a Jury Award in this year’s residential design competition.
“Hillside House,” the modern, metal-clad home designed by architect Doug Pierson, AIA, and designer Youn Choi of pod architecture + design for their own family of four, received a prestigious Jury Award during the 2022 George Matsumoto Prize competition that recognizes excellence in modernist residential design in North Carolina.
Leland Little Auctions in Hillsborough hosted this year’s awards ceremony on July 28.
NC Modernist, a nationally acclaimed non-profit organization and website based and maintained in Durham, created the annual Matsumoto Prize in 2012 to honor modernist architect George Matsumoto, FAIA, one of the founding faculty members of North Carolina State University’s College of Design. The Prize is North Carolina’s highest honor exclusively for modernist residential architecture.
Located on a wooded lot in an established neighborhood near downtown Carrboro, Hillside House is a long, slender, three-level home that directly responds to their property’s challenging terrain in form and plan as it zigzags up a steep hill. The black metal exterior and cantilevered corner decrease the house’s impact on the landscape and natural hydrology.
According to NC Modernist’s founder and director George Smart, the jurors appreciated the symbiosis between the architecture and the land. Yet they were most impressed by Pierson’s and Choi’s design decisions that, as parents, they knew would enhance daily life for their young-adult child with autism.
Form follows process. This is contemporary bourbon maker, founder and CEO of Rabbit Hole Distilling, Kaveh Zamanian’s vision for life and for his Rabbit Hole Distillery manufacturing building in downtown Louisville, Ky. This very modern, innovative 55,000-square-foot bourbon distillery, completed in July 2018, exemplifies this vision. The judges for the 2018 Metal Construction News Building and Roofing Awards were very impressed with both the distillery’s form and process, with two of them even saying that if they saw it from a distance while out driving, they would want to drive toward it to learn and see more about it.
“The Rabbit Hole Distillery project is a new contemporary building for a new bourbon manufacturing product in an otherwise traditional industry,” says Douglas V. Pierson, AIA, LEED APBD+C, co-founder/partner, architect and design principal at pod architecture + design, Carrboro, N.C.
For more information, go to metalconstructionnews.com.
Doug Pierson Tapped to Judge National Metal Construction Awards
The editors of Metal Construction News (MCN), the premier national news magazine for the metal construction industry, have tapped North Carolina architect Doug Pierson, AIA, to serve as one of only three judges for their 2019 Building and Roofing Awards.
Pierson and his partner Youn Choi are co-owners and principals of pod architecture + design. Their Chapel Hill-based firm received the highest honor – Grand Winner — in MCN’s 2018 awards program for their design of the 55,000-square-foot Rabbit Hole Distillery in downtown Louisville, Kentucky.
“Because that honor meant so much to us, I was incredibly honored when [Senior Editor] Mark Robins asked me to serve as a judge this year,” said Pierson, who is also a faculty member at NC State University’s College of Design.
MCN is a Modern Trade Communications, Inc., publication. For more information, go to metalconstructionnews.com.
pod a+d’s principals Youn Choi and Doug Pierson, AIA, were photographed with their kids, Oscar and Sora, for the cover of the July edition of The Downtowner, Chapel Hill Magazine‘s “Guide to Rediscovering Downtown.”
February 12, 2018