Inventive Minimalism

From family houses to historic restorations, hotels, and high-tech office spaces—the architectural firm of Roger Ferris + Partners has pursued uncommonly diverse projects at vastly different scales, all with an approach to design that synthesizes imagination and logic. Whether a 1,500-square-foot house on a narrow lot overlooking Long Island Sound, or the Royal Bank of Scotland’s US headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut—with a six-story glazed atrium and a “courtyard in the sky” on the roof of its two-story trading floor—a building that is “well conceived and artfully executed, cannot help but be beautiful.” Among Ferris’ major projects are a golf clubhouse that has turned a conservative typology on its ear with bladelike forms inspired by a racing engine turbine, and a partially sunken service entrance in which impresario Robert Wilson has staged theatrical productions. A design for a restaurant includes not only a central, glass-enclosed kitchen elevated 18 inches above the floor, but an art installation that periodically projects scrolling text on the dining room wall. In every project, the fulfillment of the client’s functional needs is rendered in the most elemental and legible way, resulting in both formal elegance and dramatic power.