Residential & Recreation

Optimus Architecture and principal architect, David A. Souers, AIA, has planned and designed residential and recreational projects. Our work has included single and multi-family housing, summer camp facilities and performing arts facilities, and scenic parks.

Our designs are sympathetic to context. We are often asked to design additions to period and historic houses.

Residential

Optimus has designed a number of residential projects. Each one is unique. However, there are qualities that run through each of our designs that are key to their success. This success has been recognized with various awards.

• Verandas, pergolas, patios, porches, and fenestration, help create useful and attractive outdoor space along with strong relationships between indoors and outdoors that make our clients feel connected to their total environment.

• Organization and orchestration of circulation from street, to site, to entrance, to each room or space, for vehicular or pedestrian use is essential to how well you access and use your personal environment.

• Managing and working with context from site, to existing historic structures, to owner’s personal needs and tastes makes our designs feel natural, work well and unique to your needs.

In 2000, the Rhinebeck Historic Society honored our Grant-Baden House project with an award for our sensitive treatment of a large 2,500 sf addition on an 1800's period farmhouse sited on a country road. This project also involved the re-configuration of the interior living space for modern functions for both contemporary and traditional period appeal.

Dutchess County Hilltop House

A new private house was completed in Dutchess County this fall. Sited on the top of a ridge overlooking two valleys, east and west, Optimus designed the house to take full advantage of the spectacular views from every room on every floor in this three level house.

A couple planning retirement, engaged us to design a house where they could entertain their grown children and young grandchildren, as well as, their many friends. A gourmet kitchen was essential, along with a media room, library, large open living room, a sun room, master bedroom and bath, and two guest rooms with their own bathrooms and play area. In designing the house for both fun and character, we proposed two covered porches off the guest bedrooms on the third level, one looking east and one looking west. These are special summer time outposts where the owners and their guests can relax outdoors under shelter with a view few ever see. Sunsets will be appreciated for years to come.

The house also includes an emergency generator, an elevator, geothermal heating and cooling, super-insulation, and controls to allow the owner to monitor their house from afar.

Living more than two hours away, and not familiar with builders in the area, the owner wanted an architect who could recommend builders, bid out the work and oversee the construction. The owner wanted to participate in retaining some specialty work directly, but needed an architect to help coordinate. Construction started late in 2007 with site work, and was completed early fall of 2008. Our firm provided very close supervision, providing the owner with digital photos and field reports, as well as, phone calls and email to address every detail.

We are pleased that the owner is now moved in, planning their winter holidays in their new house.

Recreational

In 1997, the New York Council Society of American Registered Architects honored us with a design award for our work at Poet's Walk Park. This 100 acre landscape park along the Hudson River is owned and operated by Scenic Hudson, a land conservancy organization. Poet's Walk is designed in the a Romantic style advocated by Andrew Jackson Downing to commemorate poets that have written about the Hudson Valley's scenic qualities.

Optimus designed a new bunk house for special needs campers at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires. We applied a design vocabulary that both blends with the existing camp buildings and raises the standard for natural materials, light, ventilation and shelter. Serving the special needs campers required close attention to the owner’s staffing, activity and operational plans.