TOP HONORS Winning Projects

Terraced Achievement

The Home Builders Association of Greenville honors industry accomplishments with annual Bridge Awards.

/ by Lynn Greenlaw / photography by Firewater Photography

The Home Builders Association of Greenville was founded 51 years ago. At that point in time, textile manufacturing was the dominant industry, the typical house averaged 1200 square feet and the population of Greenville and the surrounding area was much smaller than today. The goal of the group was to work together and cooperate in promoting the industry, new homes, home remodeling, repairs and improvements and other areas of interest to the home building industry. The association began with a few dedicated members and has grown substantially in its membership.

Every April, the group holds an awards ceremony to celebrate several categories of excellence.

This year the event took place on April 15 and included a plethora of awards. With the list of winners quite large, we have focused on one category, Special Feature, for which J. Dabney Peeples Design, The Collins Group and The Heirloom Companies were honored for their masterful work on an outdoor dining pavilion.

The pavilion is a dreamy setting for an outdoor summer dinner. Congratulations to this group of professionals for their work and to all of the other Greenville firms that received awards at this year’s ceremony.

To view a list of all of the HBA of Greenville award winners, go to hbaofgreenville.com and look for the “Events” tab for the Bridge Awards listings.

Tessa Pinner of The Collins Group provided us with the details of how this project progressed:

When the new owners of a mature garden, designed several years ago by the J. Dabney Peeples design team, reached out with the question of how to make their existing terrace into a sanctuary for outdoor dining, a new chapter in the evolution of the garden officially began.

The terrace faces west into the setting sun, making a comfortable dinner setup impossible before late evening in the summertime. Charged with devising a solution, the team first considered the option of a covered porch addition, but soon discarded that idea because it would not sit well with the architecture of the house, a beautiful three-story brick structure with all the charm of a Charleston row home. The situation called for a creative, unusual solution and thus, the possibility of a custom dining pavilion was born.

It would tick every box, dovetailing with the design of the garden by centering on the axis of the existing fountain and complementing the house not unlike a piece of sophisticated jewelry. Design inspiration ranged from the delicate lines and metalwork of the New Orleans French Quarter to the enduring tradition of outdoor living in The Hamptons. The pavilion's swooping lines contrast with the straight lines of the house, lightening the structure so that it almost seems to dance.

The copper roof will weather on the outside to a darker patina in years to come, recalling historic European churches, while the inside will remain shiny to reflect every candlelit dinner laid out beneath its canopy. Collaborating with The Heirloom Companies team to bring the pavilion from design to fabrication and then installation, overseen by The Collins Group, was a seamless and inspiring process.