Frank Harmon and friends in his garden.

WALTER Magazine: “To Be Frank”

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Frank Harmon

Frank Harmon as gardener and host of garden get-togethers with friends. (Photo by Liz Condo)

Frank Harmon’s longstanding Saturday morning tradition of coffee in the garden is an opportunity to chat and connect with longtime friends.

by Addie Ladner | photography by Liz Condo

Behind a muted pink stone wall adorned with jasmine, rich conversations and hot coffee flow. Tall, breezy live oaks shade a sandy courtyard area populated with miscellaneous folding chairs and a round table. Bluebirds sing, crinum lilies bloom and velvety white gardenias perfume the air. Here’s where you’ll find Frank Harmon and his friends most Saturday mornings, partaking in a rare ritual that encourages mindful discussion and connection.

READ MORE…

modern green building Raleigh by Frank Harmon

Global Digital Journal “Rethinking The Future” Adds Frank Harmon Projects to its Design Studio Portfolios

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modern green building Raleigh by Frank Harmon

The AIANC Center for Architecture & Design in downtown Raleigh, NC. (Photo by Tim Hursley)

Frank Harmon Architects – 15 Iconic Projects

by RTF staff

Frank Harmon Architects [sic] is a design studio of architects and designers known for their place-specific approach towards architecture to create universal impacts. Founded in 1983 by Frank Harmon, the studio is recognised as a maker of modern, sustainable, innovative, and regionally appropriate designs fulfilling contemporary needs. From private residences to major museums and wood design to sustainability, the studio has served as a great contributor to regional architecture. Frank Harmon believes in designing a building that draws people together and brings a sense of community among its people instead of designing to stand out.

Here are the 15 projects by Frank Harmon Architects that present a blend of modernism and regionalism in their architecture…

CLICK HERE to see all 15 projects.

Luxe Magazine: “A Modern Raleigh Home All About The Outdoors Is A Leading Architect’s Swan Song”

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PHOTO BY BRIE WILLIAMS

By J. Michael Welton

When Raleigh, North Carolina, architect Frank Harmon heard what his client wanted in her new home, it must have sounded like music to his ears. “I told him that light was very important, as was access to the outdoors,” says homeowner Sepi Saidi. “I wanted to feel like I’m living outside, with natural light and greenery that feels like it’s coming right into the house.”

As a graduate of NC State University—the same school where Harmon teaches architecture—Sepi was aware the architect had been pursuing that grail for most of his 50-year career. Striking up a friendship with fellow professor Harwell Hamilton Harris, a former protégé of uber-modernists Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra, during his tenure left a lasting impact on Harmon, whose own architecture followed suit. His work has come to rely on living in natural light, merging structures and landscape and integrating spatial volumes—concepts he believes enhance the human experience.

The architect’s design for Sepi in Raleigh’s vibrant Cameron Village was no different. A civil engineer at the height of her career, Sepi requested a home that would center her—a retreat from her busy professional life. “Frank endeavored to create privacy in a very dense urban area,” Sepi says. “And he did: The home is simple, with clean lines, and calming.” READ MORE

 

Architect/author Frank Harmon's article in Walter Magazine

WALTER: “Home Grown – Frank Harmon’s Garden”

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Architect/author Frank Harmon's article in Walter Magazine

Frank Harmon watches his garden fill with plantings—and memories
by Frank Harmon for WALTER magazine | illustration by  Judy Harmon

Every spring a lawn care company tosses a flyer over my garden gate. They promise to make my lawn perfect by using herbicides and pesticides. But I think I’ll keep the lawn just as it is, with scatterings of chickweed, withered starflower stems, and the occasional snakeskin.

I live in a small pink stucco house near N.C. State University. My wife Judy and I designed the house and garden in 1989. We broke ground on Valentine’s Day and moved in a year later. Then we planted the lawn.

We’d put down roots. READ MORE…

Readers' Favorite Review Native Places

Book Review: “Profoundly relevant observations about life and place”

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by Joel R. Dennstedt for Readers’ Favorite®, Oct. 26, 2019

Sketching is a fine art of suggestibility and essence, and it is not properly relegated only to the physical artist. In writing, sketching is done with quick vignettes, following the same imperatives: Suggesting briefly, catching the essence, engaging the imagination.

In Native Places, a most wonderful compilation and combination of physical and written sketches about life and place, Frank Harmon adds this personal observation: “But if I sketched it, I remembered that place forever.”

…a most wonderful compilation and combination of physical and written sketches about life and place…

Harmon is an architect. As such, he has a keen eye for the manner in which human beings reveal themselves in their buildings, including as equally important the manner in which they “context” these structures within gardens, trees, and other unique local environments. “I learned to trust the particular over the general,” he writes, “in many ways like writers who are more attuned to the particular.”

Frank Harmon’s observational eye is equal to his conceptual one. And in Native Places, he makes profoundly relevant observations about life and place. “Historians usually ignore what we’ve come to know as the vernacular. Yet the motives of the makers of vernacular buildings and places are practical, and the result is often aesthetic.” Chew on that one for a while, and appreciate the power of what Harmon refers to as “ordinariness”.

Spending quality time with the lovely sketches in this book – both physical and conceptual, painted and written – is like attending to daily meditations about spiritual matters, but without the guilt or sense of obligation. What remains is the pure, essential pleasure, if brief, of human celebration.

Book Rating: 5 Star
Readers' Favorite review 5 star seal

WALTER magazine: “Frank Harmon shares his sketches of North Carolina”

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Hewitt Pottery, Pittsboro, NC, by Frank Harmon

Whether you’ve lived here for decades or just a few months, it’s easy to be oblivious to your surroundings. In Native Places: Drawing as a Way to See, architect Frank Harmon reminds us to see beauty all around through a collection of sketches and notes he created over the years. “Since I was a boy, sketching has proved invaluable. If I took a photograph of a place, I would forget it. But if I drew it, I would remember it forever,” he says. By putting pen to paper, Harmon turns ordinary scenes into extraordinary ones and finds joy in the familiar. “I hope readers will share my delight and find some native places of their own… and perhaps even draw.” READ MORE

Residential Design

RESIDENTIAL DESIGN: “Frank Harmon’s Native Places Blog Is Now a Book”

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Residential Design

Frank Harmon, FAIA, has compiled his Native Places blog, which pairs essays and sketches, into a new book from ORO Editions. Harmon, who recently retired from teaching and practicing architecture, is known for his site-sensitive, regionally appropriate, and sustainable residential and public work. The 168-page book is available for order online from ORO at $24.95. READ MORE