Architects celebrate 10 years of bringing their unique design vision to the Miami Valley
By Benjamin Kline
Dayton Daily News 23 April 2005 Page 1E
The old real estate spiel about the importance of “location-location-location” still applies to many deals, but it’s being challenged by two Dayton architects who turn risky locations into dazzling building sites.
Rogero Buckman Architects, headed by Mary Rogero, 51, and Barry Buckman, 41, is marking 10 years in practice. They’ve been so busy, Rogero said, they haven’t nailed down a specific time to celebrate.
On virtually empty Emmet Street, east of North Main near the north shore of RiverScape Park, they are finishing up a remarkable, pristine, 2,000 square-foot house with big windows for Jose Orsini and Margerita Rivera. At 110 Frank St. in the Fairgrounds neighborhood, they won an American Institute of Architects Honor Award last year for the compact Peter and Joan Bracher house. In the Oregon District, they are transforming the smoke-stained Southern Belle tavern into a modernist, 6,000-square-foot mansion with a rooftop terrace.
And in Springfield, Rogero Buckman is one of three Ohio firms chosen for an “innovation initiative” with Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman in the redevelopment of the Greenmont Avenue neighborhood near the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Westcott House.
Buckman, from Doylestown, Pa., near Philadelphia, and Rogero, from EauGellie, Fla., met when both were working for Woolpert Co., of Dayton. She is single. His wife, Audrey, operates a high-design furniture and accessories store downtown, Go Home.
The architects’ first studio as an independent firm was in the Lofts on St. Clair Street. Then they relocated to the Cannery on East Third, finally to the Firefly Building at 123 Webster St. Each time, it was a modernist rehab of an old structure that sheltered them.
“We like to see new uses in established neighborhoods,” Buckman says. That is not saying you’ll never see a Rogero Buckman house out in the sprawling exurbs — they’re working on a Yellow Springs project right now — but it will not likely be a posturing “Colonial,” a pretentious “Country” French or one of those galloping-gables monsters the builders call “Transitional,” presumably meaning somewhere between banal and more so.
“We are Midwest, modern architects who feel strongly about good design for the way we live today, not 100 years ago,” Rogero says. (No apology for being from Dayton, either.)
The Orsini House is tall and narrow, starting with two large garage bays on the ground level of a 32-by-110-foot lot, with a modest, alley-side entry and stair tower that is the opposite of those grand, Palladian excesses on many new suburban houses. The dining, kitchen, living areas and master bedroom are on the first floor, like a traditional Italian piano-nobile. The living room soars 19 feet up, space shared visually by a balcony library area. Up even higher in the composition is a rooftop terrace that will allow the occupants to peer over the levee toward downtown. or east towards the river fountains.
Buckman said the aim was to respect the streetscape’s planes and forms and give the house a sense of two-story volume, while actually making it tall enough to catch the river view.
Rogero’s master’s thesis adviser at Miami University, architecture professor and chairman Robert Benson, says he is not surprised to see her and her associates flourishing.
“Mary was first in her class. She has a wonderful personality, bright and creative,” Benson says. “I think she is also an outstanding collaborator.
“Her undergraduate degree was in sculpture and she always enjoyed the relationship between architecture and the other fine arts. She is committed to urbanism and sustaining the visual quality of the urban environment.”
Buckman studied at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Rogero Buckman acts as building contractor for its designs, if the client wants. That extends the architect’s control over day-to-day changes that may be wanted or demanded.
The partners’ lack of snobbery is startling. Rogero, a plumber’s daughter, grew up in a big Florida 1950s ranch house and she still likes the style as done in the Buckeye State. “Dayton has some very nice 1950s neighborhoods, in Kettering and Shiloh areas,” she says. “Richard Levin did many nice ones.”
The firm’s offices are located in their own Firefly Building, 1234 Webster St., just around the corner and quite visible from Fifth Third Field.
Contact Benjamin Kline at (937) 225-2222.