comm u n i qu É R o m a n t i c H o u s e s & E v o c at i v e R o o m s
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CONTENTS COMMUNIQUÉ Volume 1, Issue 1
McAlpine Tankersley Architecture, Montgomery McAlpine Booth & Ferrier Interiors, Nashville McAlpine Booth & Ferrier Interiors, Atlanta Timeline
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We offer you a warm welcome to COMMUNIQUÉ, an online journal created by everyone at McAlpine Tankersley Architecture and McAlpine Booth & Ferrier Interiors. With this new media, our aim is to create an outlet to show, on a regular basis, exactly what we’re up to. We’ll also be including things that inspire us, things that make us happy and things that ring true in our lives. Creating homes is our passion and over the years, we‘ve been blessed to have many wonderful clients who’ve allowed us to walk alongside them on the journey of finding their homes. They’ve opened their hearts, desires and wallets to us - and we wanted to find a way to continue the conversation that has barely just begun. Our clients and supporters have become lifelong friends and this is going to be our regular letter to you… and a peek into our diary. Bobby once jokingly called our offices “Factories of Original Thinking.” In this first issue of COMMUNIQUÉ, we are featuring all three of our offices based in Montgomery, Nashville and Atlanta. We hope you enjoy swimming in our pools.
© 2010 McAlpine Tankersley Architecture and McAlpine Booth & Ferrier Interiors. All rights reserved worldwide.
Would that you’d come to know me You’d come to know my choices. They surround me And now Gladly for me Include me. This life This work These days Remind me that this is about What found me And what I begot. My partners and I Give over gladly to you What we share each day A better way Discussed on these pages Shown in works Sought through investigation, suspicion, witness, and question There is meaning in this thought And what you’ll see Is what we found And what we made Of what we saw. All in awe Of this beautiful life ~ B obby M c A l p i ne
“Practically everyone at McAlpine Tankersley lives in the neighborhood. Once we’ve walked, biked or scootered to our beautiful new urban asylum, we get the unique pleasure of helping our clients create their dream homes.”
In 1983, at the wizened age of 23, Bobby McAlpine decided to hang out his shingle and begin an architectural practice. He rented a small space in a 1920s strip shopping center in downtown Cloverdale in Montgomery, Alabama. This narrow, fourteen foot wide by forty-five foot long space, which Bobby noted was the proportion of a “good sized cat box,” was home to his business for its first five years. Fast forward twenty-seven years, three different addresses, fivehundred house designs and three partners later, and McAlpine Tankersley Architecture has truly found its home. Coincidentally, our new space is half a block up from the original, where it all began back in 1983. Our office is now located on the second floor of the Atlantic and Pacific Development, a new mixed-use development of our design. Built by the City Loft Corporation, it was honored with a Charter Award by the Congress of New Urbanism in 2008.
“Circulation and work stations are dramatically defined by tall panels of drapery. These fabric delineations work to create a calm, sanctuary-like haven...”
After entering through an oversized oak plank door, you’re greeted by an antique piece of machinery in our foyer. This metal intertwining of cogs, gears and whirligigs is, in actuality, the internal workings of a clock tower. Bobby spotted it inside a Paris shop, fell in love immediately - and promptly snatched it up. Antique steel windows, purchased on similar impulse, grace the outside walls of the buildings. The main part of this space is an open studio where we hand-produce our drawings and details. Circulation and work stations are dramatically defined by tall panels of drapery. These fabric delineations work to create a calm, sanctuary-like haven, culminating in our conference area. Nestled beside the gaping mouth of an oversized fireplace, the round fruitwood table is flanked by cozy seating groupings from McAlpine Home®.
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Practically everyone at McAlpine Tankersley lives in the neighborhood. Once we’ve walked, biked or scootered to our beautiful new urban asylum, we get the unique pleasure of helping our clients create their dream homes. Our surroundings certainly enfold and encourage these noble efforts.
n
~ g re g tanker sle y
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McAlpine Booth and Ferrier is Bobby McAlpine’s adept hand extending from the built home, to its interior. The firm was established in 1993 as Bobby was asked by numerous clients to create interior living spaces that complimented the unique architecture and style of his homes. To that end, Bobby partnered with Ray Booth and Susan Ferrier to create the interiors firm that we have today. Originally germinated in Montgomery, Alabama, MBF Interiors has grown into a partnership of offices in Nashville, New York and Atlanta and works with McAlpine Tankersley clients as well as others nationwide. One constant in the firm is affection for change. In many ways our “band of gypsies” is happiest searching the U.S. and Europe for extraordinary antiques and furnishings. But it is in our clients that we find the greatest opportunity for discovery: they come to us with wide ranging desires for their homes and set us off on new paths, challenging us to create unique and truly bespoke interiors.
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“Originally germinated in Montgomery, Alabama, McAlpine Booth & Ferrier Interiors has grown into a partnership of offices in Nashville, New York and Atlanta... �
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The Nashville studio is located in the Old Braid Electrical warehouse in downtown Nashville. It remains a great store and working laboratory for our firm. Upon entry you will find a thirteen-foot long steel factory table found in Paris. This table is the stage where we present a variety of art and objects, collected while moving through our work. Often our studio “adopts� these precious objects before moving them on to a permanent home in one of our interiors.
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Past the table there is a beautiful assemblage of furnishings and books, which serve as both library and small meeting space. Just past the library is the studio proper which is an open plan, allowing us all to interact in a collaborative environment. The workspace provides custom designed drafting desks with abundant layout space and shelving for crafted interior study models, favored and featured door hardware, and client materials. The office ends in a large resource room, the perimeter stacked to the ceiling with the best fabrics, trims, and materials we can find. The center of this room contains the largest worktable possible. This resource room is the real heart of the office in that creating beauty is messy business, and often, just before a client presentation, it is strewn with samples, binders and even furniture staged for its debut to our clients.
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This studio is designed to be a springboard from which we collectively dream on behalf of our clients – a space gracious enough to allow us to wildly create and explore in search of beautiful and timeless interiors.
n
~ ray boot h
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With a toehold firmly established in Nashville, Atlanta seemed like the next best step for an interior design studio. The international airport and Atlanta’s Design Center gained us better access to our growing national client base, as well as proximity to our vendors. Seven miles outside Atlanta’s city center is the small community of Avondale Estates. Founded in 1924 by George Francis Willis, the entire village of Ingleside was purchased to create the first planned community in the state of Georgia. With that came the oldest designated office spaces to still exist in the state. This Tudor style village was named after Stratford-upon-Avon, England, the birthplace of Shakespeare and it is where McAlpine Booth & Ferrier has made its Atlanta home. One open expansive studio space has been defined without the use of walls, but rather the placement of furniture, an enormous pair of chandeliers, and floor to ceiling sheer panels. These twelve-foot panels filter the light from our storefront back through two flanking rows of desks and drawing tables with a central conference area.
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A sequence of ganged, stainless worktables are a humble approach to creating eighteen feet of layout space embraced within a linen screen. Light plays throughout the day to reveal the subtle, ethereal six foot damask stencil pattern glazed upon our walls. In this wonderful, light and lofty space, with our clients as our muses, we gather dreams, desires, interests and loves to create a sense of home. The calm and contemplative use of large-scale pieces stills the air that is swirling with imagery, texture and color. Collected pieces from our travels accent this chamber, lending intimacy to what would normally be considered a grand space.
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““There is an appreciation for the wonderful foundation we have inherited, and eager excitement for all we have left in front of us...”
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Our library is housed in the furthest reaches of this studio: under a generous skylight that keeps us current on the passing of the day and the mood of the atmosphere. We reach deeply from within to pull forward the finest of what we have collected, to share with our clients the most current interpretation of what should be touching our lives on a daily basis. From these places we reach out toward what is good and lasting. We love what we do here. We love who we do it with. There is an appreciation for the wonderful foundation we have inherited, and eager excitement for all we have left in front of us to do, see and create in the name of home.
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~ sus an f erri er
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1983: The first office of Robert
Frank McAlpine Architecture, a humble storefront in the Cloverdale neighborhood of Montgomery.
1988: Next stop: the Sabel Mansion,
our “Mini-Biltmore,� an early 20th century limestone home near downtown Montgomery.
1996: Boredom sets in and we
TIMELINE
redecorate the Sabel Mansion.
1999: McAlpine Booth & Ferrier is
founded and moves in upstairs at the Mansion
2002: Greed sets in and we sell the
Mansion. We scramble and find a dramatic open studio downtown in an historic old bank - One Dexter Avenue. MBF moves to points beyond... 2007: Full circle - we finally build a
home for ourselves a half-block from our very first office.
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COMMUNIQUÉ Volume 1, Issue 1
COMMUNIQUÉ is the online journal of McAlpine Tankersley Architecture and McAlpine Booth & Ferrier Interiors. It will be distributed on (what we intend to be) a regular basis, whenever we have noteworthy news to share with our clients, friends, family and anyone else who is interested. The contents of COMMUNIQUÉ are Copyright © 2010 McAlpine Tankersley Architecture and McAlpine Booth & Ferrier Interiors. All rights reserved worldwide. Please contact us should you desire to copy or distribute this journal, either in whole or in part. Online COMMUNIQUÉ is powered by Issuu, Print versions of COMMUNIQUÉ are available from MagCloud. COMMUNIQUÉ was photographed, designed and produced with love by Kris Kendrick for KBK Photography & Creative. You may visit her at kbkcreative.com. Sabel Mansion photos by Mick Hales. Photo of our first office by Greg Tankersley. Want to receive email updates each time there is a new issue of COMMUNIQUÉ? Just fill out the contact form at our web site...
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