A4 Architecture Blog
A4 Spotlight: The MK Building
The Muenchinger-King Building, like many Newport Buildings, has had a long and winding history. The oldest part of the building was constructed in 1837 for a South Carolina planter named Hugh Swinton Ball. This was the period when many southern landowners summered in...
A4 Spotlight: Multi-dimensional Architecture
Architecture is not just a three-dimensional art form like sculpture but actually multi-dimensional. If you think of the sound quality of a church, the tactical quality of touching a cool marble surface in a building, or the smell of freshly cut cedar shingles on a...
Newport Spotlight: A Newport Summer
Ⓒ Nick Mele Newport has long been considered a summer resort destination since before the time of the American Revolution. It's easy accessibility to the sea and lovely climate made it an ideal place for the well-to-do to escape the heat of summer in times before the...
Newport Spotlight: Circle of Scholars
Samuel Tilton House (McKim, Mead and White, 1881) Each semester I am invited to teach a class in the "Circle of Scholars" continuing education program at Salve Regina University, located here in Newport Rhode Island. This is a program that Salve created to allow...
Newport Spotlight: Samuel Tilton House
In the 1870’s the United States was undergoing a massive change. The country was expanding westward following the completion of the Civil War and the economy was booming as a result. This in turn lead to the creation of massive industrial fortunes. In urban centers...
A4 Spotlight: Best of Newport
Each year since 1997 the readers of the Newport Life Magazine (and now the Newport Daily News, it’s sister publication under the same ownership), have been invited to vote on their favorite restaurants, stores, and professional service providers in Newport County. A4...
A4 Spotlight: US Gill Flagship Prototype
When A4 Architecture began the design process for the first flagship store for Gill Marine North America, our challenge was to try to capture both the innovation of the company’s technologic approach to apparel but also the longstanding tradition of yachting which...
A4 Spotlight: RWU School of Architecture
Rhode Island is perhaps most noted for being geographically the smallest state in the union. It is 1214 square miles (sm) in size with 1055 sm of land and 169 sm of water. The state has over 400 miles of coastline and thereby earns its nickname “The Ocean State” for...
A4 Spotlight: Newport Armory
Thames Street in Newport has long been the ‘main street’ of the city’s waterfront since its settlement in 1639. Blessed with a perfectly protected deep water harbor just off the Atlantic Ocean routes connecting New York, Boston, and Charlestown, Newport quickly grew...
A4 Spotlight: Arbor Day
There are many high technology solutions to help fight climate change, but one of the best is also one of the oldest: to plant trees. According to Wikipedia, the first communal celebration of planting trees happened in 1594 in the Spanish village of Monoñedo, where...
A4 Spotlight: Entrained Energy
As each year passes, it becomes clearer and clearer that humanity is facing a serious climate crisis. Temperatures in the Arctic and Antarctic have been measured 70 degrees above normal for this time of year. The problem often seems so large and intractable that it...
Newport Spotlight: McKim, Mead, and White
Newport Architecture Spotlight: McKim, Mead, and White in the Catherine-Kay Neighborhood The architectural firm McKim, Mead, and White, by the turn of the twentieth century would be the largest, most prolific, and most impactful practice in the world. But just twenty...