MONTGOMERYCHOI
19 W HARGETT ST STE 305
RALEIGH NC 27601
HI@MONTGOMERYCHOI.COM
919 609 0519
INSTAGRAM
PIEDMONT FOUR SEASON HOUSE

RALEIGH NC
SINGLE FAMILY
2021
The Piedmont Four Season House is a single family home in the rural outskirts just south of Raleigh. In this project, we reconsider the age-old notion of “regionalism” that suggests architecture respond to the various characteristics of its locality, be it history, climate, light, material, etc.

While a contextual approach to design remains a concern within architectural discourse, the modern construction industry has standardized and reduced the architect’s material palette, and climate-driven design approaches are increasingly made moot by advances in building technologies. Within this contracted playing field running out of problems to solve, “contextual”, or “regional” architectural designs are often relegated to superficial material treatments or post-modern allusions to esoteric shapes. Additionally, the task of finding a vernacular form is made absurd in regions like Raleigh, where four distinct, but mild seasons are experienced, and local history offers little in the way of traditional or recognizable building forms due to a being a late-growth city only recently populated with people and culture. 

Freeing the building massing from any formalistic burdens of historic references or climate performance, the Piedmont Four Season House instead looks to the way a resident’s use of the house might change with the mildly fluctuating seasons and responds to it in the plan. The house is organized around a central dining space that selectively connects the various zones of the house according to season, creating a fluid plan designed to provide human comfort, attuned to the nuanced seasonal changes.
WORK


LAB



WHO




WE PRACTICE ARCHITECTURE BECAUSE WE LOVE CITIES
ELIZA MONTGOMERY is an architect, urbanist and native of downtown Raleigh.

Her experiences living and working in New York City over 12 years have given her both passion and expertise in solving complex architectural and urban issues. Prior to founding MontgomeryChoi, she was an Associate at Ennead Architects (formerly Polshek Partnership) in NYC for 7 years. There she designed a range of cultural, institutional and mixed use projects around the country and world. But her true passion lies in extending her design skills past the traditional field of architecture.

Eliza co-leads the Rethinking Refugee Communities project, a collaboration with Ennead Lab and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that addresses the growing and protracted crises affecting the lives of refugees and their host communities. She's visited, analyzed and designed refugee settlements around the world including in Rwanda, Jordan and Nepal and has lectured extensively on the subject. Eliza has taught as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute and has led design workshops for multidisciplinary participants at The New School and other organizations.

Eliza is a registered Architect in North Carolina and New York. She is a Fellow at the Urban Design Forum in NYC. Eliza has a Master of Architecture degree from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies from Bard College.

WILL CHOI is an architect with a keen interest in the link between the shapes of our cities and the shapes of our communities. 

Through a decade of practice working with internationally recognized offices such as Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and SHoP Architects, Will designed and led projects in urban centers around the country that fostered his appreciation for the way buildings may transform the surrounding communities, but more importantly, how communities may transform the design of the buildings, and ultimately cities. 

Will has held faculty positions at the Parsons School of Design in New York City, and maintains a passion for teaching. He can often be found serving as an invited juror at various institutions, including Columbia University, NYU, and NC State University. Will is a registered architect in North Carolina and New York.

Will holds a Master of Architecture from Harvard University, and a Bachelor of Design from University of Florida, but considers his best education the life lived hopping around great cities. That’s Seoul, New York, Boston, and of course, Raleigh!



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HI@MONTGOMERYCHOI.COM

919 609 0519

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19 W HARGETT ST SUITE 305

RALEIGH NC 27601 

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