Helicon Works Architects

I called Bill after several attempts with other architects didn’t work out as I wished. I wanted to enlarge my kitchen but a oddly shaped porch addition with concrete steps underneath made it difficult. He listened to my needs, worked around the parameters of the job, and designed an efficient new kitchen for me. I finished kitchen is a delight to cook and live it. what used to be a dingy room that no one but the cook liked to enter is now the heart of our house.

Bill Hutchins of Helicon Works designed a beautiful addition to my home that included a sunroom with a green roof garden and a rustic but magnificent screened porch. His team of creative and knowledgable artisans and skilled tradespeople worked together to ensure that my project was well executed, true to my desires, environmentally respectful, within budget, and completely fabulous. Details include poured concrete with in-​floor radiant heat, green building materials inside and out, custom made lighting using recycled glass, large R-​rated windows bringing in nature and lots of light, hand made built in natural wood bench and shelving, rusted metal columns and trim, soft asymmetrical lines.

About a decade ago I was fortunate enough to find Helicon Works when I was looking for a «green» architect for a house I wanted to have in West Virginia. As with most «customers» of architects, I knew little about house design and construction, and even less about what I wanted in my new house. Bill Hutchins of Helicon Works worked with me to design what has become not only the house that belongs to me, but the house to which I belong. The house defines «home» to me.
The best analogy I have come up with is that of the relationship between Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, although the analogy is perhaps not Bill’s favorite. You may recall the line that «Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in heels!» Bill led me through the process of defining, and designing, the house of my dreams. Without his ever subtle guidance I have no idea where my project would have come out. Not only is my house ecologically sound (southern exposure, foamed-​in insulation, massive stone woodburning furnace, and lots more), but also the house fits me, fits the land, and is adored by my children. I had issues with the construction, but even in retrospect, after a decade, I am still entranced by the design and forever in Bill Hutchins’ debt. The process and product of our collaboration remains one of a half dozen highlights of my 73 years.

I hired Bill Hutchins, because I thought he would design me a beautiful home — not just a functional one. When I went to Bill I had already spent a lot of time researching green homes. I wanted a high thermal mass, passive solar home, built into the hillside on my south-​facing, sloping lot. I can still remember Bill’s reaction when I first described my vision. He said, «Oh, you don’t want to live in a hobbit house!» I was a bit offended, but the more I chewed on it, the more I thought he might be right. The designs I had been playing with were all boxy, and boring from the outside. One visit to Bill’s home, and a look at his portfolio, made it clear that anything he designed would be unique, attractive and modern. I figured he would provide a good balance to my left-​brained personality.
Bill has a lot of stuff on his web site that is more Eastern/​mystical than I care for, and he offered that perspective as part of the design process, but he didn’t push it at all. It’s part of his creative outlook; I figured it was just another way he would balance my left brain. The topic didn’t come up much after we got started, which was OK by me.
Bill visited my lot once, a 4-​hour drive. He agreed with my siting of the house, and even with the basic footprint (an odd, dog-​leg shape) I had sketched out. But the final design reflects practical and aesthetic touches that I never dreamed of, and that make the house much more interesting, fun and livable. Highlights include the «butterfly» roof, cantilevered upstairs bedroom, the whole-​treetrunk columns (three outside, one inside), exposed beams, open floor plan, curving outdoor stairway, masonry stove, and the cold storage room accessible from inside. I love it.
Another reviewer here says that Bill was only good at «submitting invoices». Bill’s final charges to me were completely in line with his original bid, despite the fact that I changed from a straw-​bale design to SIPs, fairly late in the design process. Bill was also good at estimating the total cost of the home. I was way too optimistic at the start, hoping to save a lot by doing much of the work myself, and Bill helped me to be more realistic.
My only complaints:
1) a couple of features in the floor plan. We really do love almost everything about it, but the master bedroom is a bit smaller than the two guest bedrooms. And the laundry area is oddly visible when you first walk into what is otherwise a lovely and unusual room for relaxing and receiving guests. My wife and I saw these features in the drawings, and talked about them a lot, but we didn’t come up with alternatives or insist on fixing them, so perhaps we can’t blame Bill. The bedroom isn’t a big deal, we only sleep there, and I’m going to put up doors to hide the laundry. But lesson learned — listen to your gut when looking at drawings.
2) the way the «collaborative» worked. Bill pulls in other professionals on each job, but most team members have two email addresses, one at
and one elsewhere. I learned that some of them didn’t regularly monitor their
inbox. Bill had another architect produce the drawings, which mostly went well but she worked only part-​time and had a young child, and there were occasional miscommunications and delays. Other members of the team were the landscape architect (who mostly worried about stormwater issues and drainage) and the «energy consultant». This latter person’s fees were not included in the main contract; I didn’t understand that, or the scope of his work, at first. He did a lot of energy calculations, but I’m not sure it affected the design. I thought he was going to design a solar thermal panel system that I could build and install; eventually it became clear that he wanted to build and install it himself, and when I didn’t pursue that he just faded away. I only paid him $ 500, but all I got out of it was some assurance that the house would be as energy efficient as I had hoped. If you go with HW, be sure you understand the team member «deliverables» up front.
Other than the fact that the house is visually stunning, I’m most happy that it works as well as it does energy-​wise. It’s located in western Maryland, in a cold and cloudy climate at 2600′ elevation. And the house has no furnace — only a passive solar design, and a masonry (wood) stove. The stove isn’t finished and working yet, but the house still stays about 25 – 30 degrees above the average outdoor temperature. I.e., when January daytime highs are 30 degrees, and nighttime lows near 10, it will be near 50 inside. Using just two space heaters, I can get it up to 68 within a day or two, and hold it there. Once the stove is completed, I’ll be able to heat the house with one small fire per day, exactly the kind of performance I wanted.
Thanks Bill for designing our lovely, unique, comfortable, energy-​efficient, and practical home.

This guy presents himself as a guru of green architecture, but his main talent is writing invoices. To design a top-​to-​bottom remodel of my four-​story house, he visited it once. He flew in a young architect from Colorado (!) to document the house, but they were both distracted by a disaster on another job (frantically redesigning at the last minute) and the drawings of my house were a mess — a door where there wasn’t one, pipes and radiators missing, measurements wrong.
They brought in a ‘structural engineer’ who jumped up and down on one part of the concrete floor like a toddler on a trampoline, pronounced it sound, and added, grinning, «I went to school for 10 years to learn how to do this.» Maybe he should have studied longer, since it turned out that the floor was cracked through, and only one inch thick in parts (and underneath it was a sewer pipe that could have passed for a colander). Helicon also gave wrong information about the DC code and regulations. As for Helicon’s proposed drawings for the renovation, just for one example, we would have had to walk around a bed to get out the back door.
When I began to raise questions about the work, he simply refused to answer my emails and refused to go to mediation — although that’s what his contract calls for in case of a dispute. When we finally parted ways, he kept all of his hefty fees and retainer, and didn’t even return the books and magazines I had lent him as examples.
Now, I’m glad to say, I’ve got a sound, beautiful renovation underway, and a great architect — who just can’t believe the drawings from Helicon.