Every project begins with a set of conditions - an existing building, a difficult site, a demanding program, or a particular way of living. We look for opportunities within these conditions and use design to make more possible: more space, more usefulness, more connections, and more value from what exists and your proforma.

Making More Possible

How do we turn real constraints into opportunities for better places, better buildings, and better ways of living?

We make existing buildings work harder.

Von Joneschilds Residence

Making a small house live large

Problem: Accommodate a growing family within a modest 1,000 SF Vermont house.

Skyplane: Reorganized the existing plan, concentrated service spaces, introduced selective additions, and used structure and daylight strategically to increase usable area to approximately 1,800 SF while retaining the character of the original house.

Result: More capacity, better connection to the landscape, and a contemporary family home rooted in its historic context.

We turn constraints into Architecture.

Corten ADDclusion

Adding space without compromising context

Problem: Expand a Philadelphia rowhouse while responding to the tight rear-yard conditions and established material character of the neighborhood.

Skyplane: Designed a compact addition as a contemporary counterpart to the existing brick structure, using Corten steel, carefully controlled openings, and precise panel proportions to establish continuity without imitation.

Result: Additional living space that feels integrated into the rowhouse rather than appended to it.

Christian Street “Cube-Top”

Adding density without losing identity

Problem: Add a third-floor workspace to a historic Philadelphia rowhouse without overwhelming the existing building or surrounding neighborhood.

Skyplane: Set the new volume back from the street and treated it as a distinct contemporary object, using proportion, transparency, and a vertically articulated metal skin to mediate between old and new.

Result: Additional usable space with minimal visual impact at the street.

Queen Village Rowhouse:‍ ‍

Finding new space within the Philadelphia rowhouse

Problem: Expand a historic rowhouse while preserving its relationship to the shared rear-yard landscape.

Skyplane: Used the rear addition, exterior rooms, existing masonry, exposed structure, and a new light-filled stair to reorganize the relationship between house and courtyard.

Result: More living space and a stronger connection to the collective landscape that defines the Philadelphia rowhouse from the rear.

We help bring new life to historic buildings.

Slaughterhouse Estate Restoration

Restoring historic fabric through design and craft

Problem: Revive a deteriorated 1891 Second Empire residence while preserving its architectural character.

Skyplane: Combined historic research, design, construction knowledge, and collaboration with local craftspeople to reconstruct missing details and restore original granite, slate, woodwork, windows, tile, and interior finishes.

Result: A carefully restored landmark that demonstrates how historic preservation can be accomplished through detailed architectural intervention rather than simple replication.

Queen of Germantown

Turning a historic landmark into viable housing

Problem: Transform a former Mount Airy church into contemporary housing without losing the presence and material character of the historic structure.

Skyplane: Developed a strategy that preserves the existing stone architecture while introducing clearly contemporary additions, entries, roof structures, and landscape interventions.

Result: Nineteen residences within a renewed historic landmark—demonstrating how preservation and new development can reinforce rather than oppose one another.

We create new housing in complex urban contexts.

The Leithgow 5

Creating new housing with individual identity

Problem: Transform seven Philadelphia lots into five new homes while balancing development requirements, parking, density, neighborhood character, and individual identity.

Skyplane: Developed a shared architectural language that allows each home to read as an individual residence while maintaining a coherent relationship across the development.

Result: A five-home development conceived as a family of related buildings rather than a collection of unrelated units.

Capital Cohousing

Innovative housing infill development

Problem: Design infill housing on existing lots incorporating design district requirements, parking, appropriate density, neighborhood character, and individual innovative building assembly.

Skyplane: Created a site-specific modern housing project with integrated underground parking, and shared amenity spaces.

Result: An 8-Unit Co-op Condo development conceived to utilize a systematic prefabricated mass-timber building language.

Corinthian Contemporary

Making a new building belong by contrast

Problem: Introduce new housing into an established Philadelphia neighborhood without simply reproducing its historic architecture.

Skyplane: Reinterpreted the proportions, rhythm, hierarchy, and material language of the traditional rowhouse through a deliberately contemporary façade.

Result: A building that contributes to the continuity of the street precisely because it does not imitate it.

We understand how buildings are made.

Salisbury Ridge

Integrating design and construction

Problem: Create a highly individual home rooted in Vermont’s landscape and building traditions.

Skyplane: Design and construction were developed together, using site-quarried stone, timber, masonry, and durable structural systems to create a home whose architecture grows directly from its setting.

Result: A deeply site-specific house and an early demonstration of Skyplane’s belief that better architecture emerges when design and making are treated as one process.