Business
& Labor
"Missouri Is the Land of Awesome Opportunity," Says
Matthew Hufft
(archrecord.construction.com - 08/17/2006)
By Ingrid Spencer
Today the winners of the 2007 BusinessWeek/Architectural
Record awards program were announced. This was the ninth annual
installment of the competition, which is run jointly by Architectural
Record and BusinessWeek magazines.
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Those same parents—whose son by
the age of 10 could either build a fence or demolish a barn
with a chain saw, a hammer, and nails—eventually became
Hufft’s first client. Hufft had been working for Tigerman
McCurry Architects in Chicago after receiving his B.Arch.
from the University of Kansas in 2000 and traveling from Japan
to Indonesia studying Eastern architecture, when his parents,
who lived in a traditional farmhouse full of French Country
antiques in Springfield, shocked him with a request. “I
don’t know how they got there—maybe because of all
the books I had brought home during architecture school—but
they told me they wanted to go Modern,” he says. “They
were ready to get rid of all the clutter and streamline their
lives, and they asked me if I would design their new house.”
The “Line House,” as Hufft dubbed it, took three
years to create. “I was so naive,” he says. “The
house went from 16 drawings to 50. It’s due to the patience
of my parents and the contractor, whom I still work with,
that it all came together.” The design is based on two
concepts—configurations of a line, made most prominent
by a retaining wall that was needed because of the sloped
site, and the idea that the house would be split into three
separate sections connected by that line. Thinking, doing,
and living occur separately in this house, as the library,
workshop (Hufft’s father loves carpentry), and living
areas have their own individualized environments, with the
wall in common. Hufft admits the project was a lot to take
on, but since its completion, it has served a purpose greater
than just providing a happy home for his family. “Most
of the clients I’ve had go see the house before hiring
me,” he says. “It’s become a calling card.”
As an example of what Hufft can do,
the house surely delivers. He moved to New York City in 2001
to get an M.Arch. degree from Columbia University, then went
to work for Bernard Tschumi Architects until last year. Now
on his own, he has remained in New York to be on the pulse
of the design scene, yet all of his current work is in Missouri.
“Missouri is the land of awesome opportunity,” says
the architect, who runs an office of four people. “It
feels like unexplored territory, while New York is the land
of inspiration and community.” Hufft currently spends
three weeks in New York City and one in Kansas City, Missouri,
but has plans to flip that and eventually move to Kansas City
full time. “I like that in Missouri I can build things
from the ground up,” he says.
And while his residential clients continue
to recommend him to their friends who own businesses (he recently
renovated a salon and will soon break ground on a 25,000-square-foot
shopping complex in Springfield for which he hopes to achieve
LEED Gold status), he’s also working on establishing
a bathtub-fixture company called Edwin, from his middle name.
“For every problem, there’s a solution,” says
Hufft, who has found a few solutions he thinks Edwin could
share with the public. Keep an eye on this one—he’s
now armed with more than a chain saw, a hammer, and some nails.
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Click for a slide show of images.
