Architecture & Planning

Every South Mountain Company (SMCo) project rests on a foundation of integrated architecture, engineering, and building. This integration brings clarity and integrity to a complex process. We honor the beautiful island we call home with celebrations of place that harmonize art, science, and craft. We engage you, the client, in a collaborative and transparent process driven by your goals and aspirations, guided by our expertise and experience.

You get a beautiful, high-performance building made with you, for you

SMCo’s integrated process works uniquely well because it keeps the responsibility and accountability in just one place. It’s very direct – just SMCo and you, working in collaboration, fully aligned with each other. This central relationship makes it possible for us to offer you security, service, performance, beauty, and quality – all at once.

By practicing for decades in one small region, we stay connected to our buildings and clients, learning from both. Our experience has inspired principles which guide our work and allow us to explore a variety of often surprising (and always respectful) design paths.

Our staff of 35 includes five architects (more than any other firm on Martha’s Vineyard), three engineers, two interior designers, four project leads, one shop lead, and a large team of carpenters, woodworkers, and solar installers. All of the above are supported by a strong team of administrative/management personnel. The multi-disciplinary mix gives us a tremendous range of capacities under one roof.

A better process. A better outcome.

Design is an adventure. When architects and clients collaborate successfully, the experience can be as satisfying as the results. Our four decade practice has been an unfolding evolution. We have been involved with hundreds of projects on Martha’s Vineyard. With each, our design abilities grow, and our work embraces new dimensions.

The SMCo design department is led by our five licensed architects. Ryan Bushey co-manages architecture with our CEO and Founder, John Abrams. Matt Coffey, Beth Kostman, Greg Milne, and Angie Francis complete the team.

With such a varied group, our range is greater than ever in terms of style and building types (single family residential, residential neighborhoods, commercial, and institutional).

Our diversity and range of talent allows us to match projects and clients with the right architect to serve you in the best possible way.

Understanding the land

Design work on any South Mountain project begins with a comprehensive site analysis consisting of the following parts:

• Understanding the context of the property
• Identifying zoning and regulatory constraints
• Compiling climate data (sun angles, prevailing winds, annual rainfall)
• Delineating important views (and views to avoid)
• Locating utilities and infrastructure
• Photographing site conditions
• Recording existing building conditions

During this process, we engage civil engineers to create a complete base map. Once completed, our collaboration deepens with the addition of a landscape architect.

Discovering the promise of each site

In concert with our collaborators, we discover what the site offers and how to preserve and enhance its important qualities. We go to great lengths to protect existing trees, vegetation, and habitat, and we integrate native plantings and edibles in to each landscape.

The design process proceeds until we have found solutions that seamlessly satisfy the project goals and client interests in a manner that enhances the land. Outdoor rooms complement indoor rooms. Processions are intuitive. Landforms harmonize. Plantings belong.

Site and landscape are every bit as important as buildings. One of our landscape designers (now retired) said, many years ago, “Your building is only an element in my landscape.” Our aspiration is to weld each building flawlessly and comfortably into the landscape it is a part of.

We are placemakers. We create buildings, landscapes, settings, environments, and neighborhoods. Our job is to listen to the land and the people connected to it, to understand the underlying patterns in the landforms, to recognize how our sites relate to the human and non-human communities around them, and to connect our buildings to the land they occupy and the people who inhabit them.

You, the neighborhood, the island, and the planet

We hold ourselves accountable to a succession of clients – primarily to you, but also to three others: the neighborhood, the island, and the planet. The needs of all must be considered, understood, and respected.

We engage in a variety of master planning endeavors – with local non-profits, with affordable housing organizations, with businesses, and residential property owners.

We work with organizations, regulatory agencies, and neighbors. We have cultivated meeting facilitation skills and can successfully work with groups so that all voices are respected in the planning process, information is collected and organized, and community consensus is reached.

Taking the long view

A good master planning process assembles resource, social, and economic intelligence into coherent long term plans which protect and celebrate the island we call home.

“The best developments in town are when someone who has been a long time renter decides to build a house, hires South Mountain and all proceeds calmly and well because South Mountain really gets it.”

Development is invention. Our first question is about need: are we proposing to invent something that our community needs? At South Mountain, our development efforts have primarily been focused on affordable housing.

Like many, our concern runs deep about the Vineyard’s affordable housing crisis and its effect on both the quality of peoples’ lives and the strength of our community. We think of affordable housing work as “community preservation,” as important to the quality of life here as land preservation.

Affordable housing advocacy, design, and building

For the past 30 years we have combined affordable housing advocacy, design, and building into an essential aspect of our work and one of the identifying characteristics of our company. We believe that affordable housing should be as thoroughly designed as the very best luxury housing – just smaller, less elaborate, more economical, and financed differently. We create comfortable, healthy, dignified places for people to live; housing that is easy to live in and is characterized by low energy use and low maintenance, which makes it affordable forever.

We offer an integrated approach to mechanical systems, science-based building envelope solutions, renewable energy, and structural engineering. We guide the design process to assure that each dollar is spent to maximize value.

Our integrated consulting services and technical assistance to owners and design teams allows multiple challenges to be solved simultaneously.

HVAC, building envelope, and high performance consulting is primarily for our in-house projects. As resources allow, however, we extend these services to other architects, builders, and clients for residential, commercial, and institutional projects.

When we design buildings, we specify a program – what the spaces and their functions will be – and a budget. At South Mountain, we also specify performance – how the building will function in terms of its health and safety, comfort, acoustics, and resource usage. Another characteristic of a high-performance home is “resilience.”

Resilience is the capacity of a system to retain or rapidly regain functionality in the face of stress, disturbance or change. Resilient buildings support us when natural events (hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, wildfires, ice storms) or man-made events (explosions, spills, infrastructure destruction, riots, toxic contamination of water, air, or soil) interfere with daily life.

During and after such events we try to satisfy our basic physical needs – clean water, food, shelter, heat, and sanitation – and supplementary needs like medical treatment, security, communications, and access to information.

Resilient design makes this easier to do.