RIDGEFIELD — “What’s so beautiful about the constructing is it’s about 7000 square feet and it feels, and is built, like a modern day property and yet it’s a professional creating. It has a lot more of a residential really feel than a standard place of work building,” reported Scott Fellows. “When people today walk in, primarily the way we have furnished it and tailored it for our use, it feels like a blurring between a beautiful, tiny executive business making and a contemporary home. People today say, ‘I want to live here.’”

The Schlumberger Investigation Heart administration constructing, created in 1951 and created in 1952, was architect Philip Johnson’s first nonresidential commission. The one-tale, steel-glass-and-brick making with nine other buildings on a 47-acre campus was owned by Schlumberger oil organization.

“We ended up type of obsessed with that constructing,” said Fellows, 55, of BassamFellows, an architecture, interior style and design, inventive branding, and furnishings firm that he and his partner, Craig Bassam, 56, commenced in 2003. 

Annette Schlumberger and her husband, Henri Doll, commissioned the framework soon after touring Philip Johnson’s Glass Home, which had been developed in 1948-1949 in New Canaan.

BassamFellows Headquarters — (Photograph: Michael Biondo)

By the time the Bassam and Fellows were being mindful of the making, it had already sat vacant for 7 years, drinking water hurt had ruined areas of the interior and the developing had been lower off from utilities provider. 

The “PJB” as it was known to locals, linked via an enclosed glass corridor to a kitchen area and restroom in a different constructing crafted in 1949.

When Schlumberger left the campus in 2006 and failed to provide the assets, the City of Ridgefield inevitably purchased it for $7 million in 2012, fearing the residence would be ordered by a developer.

The 1949 constructing was then razed along with six other creating on the residence, cutting it off from essential utilities and providers. 

Mid-century restoration

Fellows and Bassam initially moved from New York City to New Canaan in 1998 and acquired a 1956 mid-century house, which they endeavored to restore. When they had been completed, the household was detailed on the Countrywide Register of Historic Spots. 

“We have been really happy of that simply because frequently restorations really nullify a constructing from remaining detailed on the National Register for the reason that it is insensitive or usually takes away from the historic material,” reported Fellows. 

That 1st house venture established them on a program with preservation as a main ingredient of their enterprise, he explained.

“We truly feel really strongly that properties are not museums and that preservation is to make a home or setting up livable and suitable for currently whilst at the exact time remaining considerate of the historic mother nature of the assets and to not do something that would negate all those critical listings on the national register,” he claimed. “So after that we variety of fell into a couple additional tasks like that regionally, and mainly because we’re kind of modernist architecture experts, if you will, we have been in a position to advise shoppers on what to do with these forms of properties.” 

The pair took on much more preservation initiatives in the U.S. and Europe that broadened their expertise with modernist buildings. Then, they made a decision to provide their very first residence in New Canaan and were being setting up to construct a residence when they read of a Philip Johnson home in New Canaan for sale by the heirs of the first owner.

“They ended up searching for the proper preservation-minded potential buyers,” claimed Fellows. 

In 2006, Bassam and Fellows acquired Hodgson Home, which is listed on the Nationwide Sign up and positioned throughout the road from the Glass Dwelling. 

Hodgsen Property (Courtesy of BassamFellows)

“We embarked on a multiple-12 months restoration and rebuilding of this house simply because of its historic great importance,” said Fellows. “It’s our residence and it’s our principal residence and we are custodians of this household. We’re rebuilding the fundamental sort of infrastructure and units that the property desires for its up coming 70 several years of life.” 

The Countrywide Rely on, based in Washington, is overseeing the house restoration, which is a “whole other level,” Fellows reported. “It’s a incredibly sensitive restoration, form of like restoring a museum.” 

A enormous undertaking

In the midst of renovating and restoring Hodgson Dwelling, Fellows and Bassam commenced exploring for a lasting residence for their business. 

“Because our business is home furniture and structure, and that emanates from our lifestyle and architecture and our enjoy of modern-day houses, we actually desired a creating that would mirror all of that ethos of our brand,” Fellows claimed. “And we genuinely desired a traditionally crucial constructing, we were searching for a extended time for anything that would suit into that.” 

Daybed (Courtesy of BassamFellows)

Unexpectedly, they transpired upon the Schlumberger campus and the PJB. 

“There was a ton of communicate about the long term of that making,” stated Fellows. “We initially approached Schlumberger about purchasing just the Philip Johnson building because we had no use for the 45 acres, but Schlumberger was not intrigued in providing that one whole lot.”

Schlumberger then proposed demolishing all of the properties and promoting the land to the best bidder — raising alarm among the the townspeople of Ridgefield — which led to a referendum to obtain the home in late 2011. 

Fellows claimed they experimented with to converse with the town about the PJB, but “they put us on the back again burner simply because they ended up attempting to do a even bigger offer.” But persistence paid out off, he explained. 

‘The story took approximately seven many years from the time we talked with Schlumberger to when we did the deal with the town,” he reported. “In the conclude, cause won out and the town did divide 45 acres into parcels, component of which was designed for household, but they did retain the Philip Johnson Setting up. The city gave a lifetime lease to us, and we are dependable for funding the restoration of the creating.” 

The PJB was in a sorry condition from water hurt when Bassam and Fellows took possession, and a even bigger problem was the deficiency of utilities in the setting up. A kitchen, an ADA-compliant bathroom and HVAC would have to be extra.

BassamFellows Headquarters — (Picture: Michael Biondo)

The interior brickwork was intact, but incredibly filthy, needing to be triply acid-washed and repointed. The oak woodwork, such as the window frames, was badly stained by water damage and the shellac experienced cracked and yellowed.

“We hand sanded all wooden in the creating and then we could not get all drinking water harm off, so we experienced to bleach all of the wooden, which produced wood a minor little bit lighter, and then finished with a purely natural oil dependent item that keeps the wooden in its pure point out. That was a large work that took months and weeks and weeks to do,” he claimed. 

The ground was the 3rd key issue. Johnson had made use of a pale gray vinyl tile that experienced been carpeted about. The carpet was destroyed in the flooding and underneath the vinyl tile was wrecked. Bassam and Fellows sourced a French quarry tile organization that they had employed for tile in their Philip Johnson dwelling and had been in a position to match the unique pale grey coloration. 

The PJB has grow to be the business headquarters for BassamFellows as well as its design studio and showroom.

The developing is organized all around a central main that contains an open up-air courtyard. Places of work line the perimeter of the making and a vast corridor with almost 80 skylights surrounds the main and presents a bright, normally-lit space. 

“Every area that you are in the creating, you have that immediate relationship to nature,” Fellows mentioned.

On both stop of the core house, there are two huge, open up regions that had been at the time applied as secretarial pools, which were being transformed into “hospitality spaces,” adaptable to today’s doing work design and style.

BassamFellows Headquarters — (Photograph: Michael Biondo)

“In one particular of people regions, we have it established up like a incredibly massive residing space, with an ell-formed sofa and a dining table, and on the other aspect we did a massive desk open up collaborative house when we have conferences with a large tv set screen for shows,” he mentioned. 

The organization has won awards locally and internationally. 

“We gained a further award a year ago from Docomomo, an worldwide corporation focused to preservation of fashionable architecture all-around the globe and previous thirty day period we obtained the Hook up Preservation award,” Fellows stated. “We were being also highlighted in the Italian journal, Interni, in  June 2020.” 

The link concerning Hodgson Home and PJB is strong, Fellows explained. 

“What’s really exceptional is our dwelling is the Philip Johnson Hodsgon home in New Canaan– and was developed in 1950-1951 and the Schlumberger was created in 1951-1952 so the two properties are like companions to each individual other,” he claimed. “A lot of the materiality is the identical, a ton of the development specifics are the similar. The Schlumberger is a bigger, commercial variation of what is effectively the dwelling. It’s funny that our whole lifetime from house to business office is wrapped up in this pretty particular time period of PhIlip Johnson, which we completely appreciate and it is like a dream arrive true.”

Modeling the future

Fellows and Bassam each invested a fantastic deal of time performing in Europe prior to settling in the United States. Fellows, who has an MBA from Harvard, labored in the luxury items market, rebranding item strains including Bally, Ferragamo and Herman Miller.

“I beloved the thought of beautiful solutions that have been wonderfully crafted and produced to very last. Luxurious merchandise had been produced from definitely the ideal products employing the totally finest craftsman, and the rationale for that way was they ended up supposed to be endlessly,” he stated. 

Bally Retail Store, Berlin (Courtesy of BassamFellows)

BassamFellows brought alongside one another Bassam’s architecture qualifications with Fellows’ background in luxurious goods into what they describe as “Craftsman Present day.”

“It’s genuinely the merging of our two backgrounds,” Fellows stated of the firm’s philosophy and branding. “A lot of persons associate modernism with staying cold or sterile or in some way not welcoming and we think that modernism can be warm, it can be tactile, it can be fantastically crafted and that actually comes from this other sensibility that we the two have that materiality and craft truly make a difference.” 

Scott Fellows and Craig Bassam (courtesy of BassamFellows)

The firm’s model has 3 pillars — architecture and interior design and style, imaginative route and brand name tactic, and home furniture. 

“We’ve developed each and every calendar year and I believe with the home furnishings company in certain we have a ton of encounter doing residential and hospitality assignments all all over the planet. We see that we have a good potential to increase even larger. We see ourselves accomplishing more in the agreement market, which implies far more resorts, hospitality, much more places to eat, and additional professional purposes like places of work, like our possess Philip Johnson creating, in addition to continuing our household perform,” Fellows explained. 

He and Bassam will carry on to seem for jobs like the Philip Johnson developing that will need to be preserved.

“We’re putting up our individual funds to preserve them, to restore them and make them additional appropriate,” he claimed. “And then we both keep them or hire them or come across a way to give them their future life. We’d like to do even far more of that.”

Bally Headquarters, Lugano (Courtesy of BassamFellows)

Searching ahead, Fellows sees key shifts taking place in companies and metropolitan areas following the pandemic that will end result in modifications in architectural style.

“We’re starting off to see the large box, if you will, is becoming damaged down, and I really don’t think any of us are heading again to generally operating from a large corporate creating in a town,” he reported. “I imagine there is a whole lot of opportunity to style spaces that are this type of blur amongst do the job and dwelling, sort of one thing in amongst. I think that is what the Philip Johnson making actually is for us. It truly presents an indication of the model of more and additional of the future.”