12/24

From Washingtonian Magazine

By Eric Wills, photography by Evy Mages.

**Jacobsen at the mausoleum on his farm. Every morning, he says, “I look out the window, say hello to Dad, and get on with the day.”**
**SIMON JACOBSEN, 59, ALL BUT GREW UP IN THE OFFICE OF HIS** father, celebrated architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen. The elder man was a towering figure in the profession, responsible for the Renwick Gallery’s interior restoration, the west-terrace addition at the US Capitol, and hundreds of projects in Georgetown, where he lived. In 2009, father and son became partners in Jacobsen Architecture, where, among other projects, they renovated more than a dozen houses Hugh had designed decades before. When the pandemic hit, they moved to a farm in Delaplane, Virginia. After Hugh died in 2021, Simon designed a mirrored mausoleum on his property to house his father’s ashes. We spoke to him about the meaning behind the memorial.
**“HE WAS SITTING IN AN URN** in my living room. It had been six months since he passed, and I couldn’t give him a funeral because of Covid. I found this poem by Han Kang, and it read, ‘After you died I could not hold a funeral, and so my life became a funeral.’ I just woke up one morning and said, ‘I bet we could do it like this.’ It was divine guidance.
“The dimensions are three feet 11 inches deep, which is March 11, his birthday, and six feet wide, which was his height. It’s pointing towards Washington and Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he was born. It’s framed the way he framed his buildings. We wake up in the morning and I look out the window, say hello to Dad, and get on with the day. He’s on a stainless-steel-and-slate plinth he designed for another project that just ended up in the office.
“[The mausoleum] will mimic whatever is around it. Which is one of Hugh’s quotes from the ’80s: He said, ‘Like a lady, the best house is polite to her neighbors and never shouts.’ Try that today. But it’s kind of what this thing does. It sits in the background and is quiet.
“We get visitors from all over—a busload on a wine tour, or colleagues of his that have made the trek.
“[He and I] formed a company together in 2009. It’s one of the nicest things anybody’s ever done for me, because he didn’t need to. He wasn’t my best friend, and I wasn’t his, but we had each other’s backs.
“We like to say our clients look really good in our houses. When we design them, we’re imagining cocktail hour, when the long shadows start and somebody opens a bottle of wine. The mission is always chasing that 45-degree roof with no trim, no molding. I’m still chasing that aesthetic. And I don’t dare wander off, because the world is watching. But we can’t just recreate Hugh’s fingerprint. We’ve got to bring it into the 22nd century.
“I’m still working on his legacy, and mine, and the legacy of this company. It’s like holding onto the ears of a wolf. No matter how unpleasant it is, you don’t dare let go.”

2024/2025

Simon Jacobsen and Jacobsen Architecture has been inducted into **Forbes Magazine’s “Forbes 200-America’s Top Residential Architecture Firms.”**
***From the Editor***
Founded by the celebrated architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen in 1960, Jacobsen Architecture is the successor firm led by the son, Simon Jacobsen, and headquartered in the heart of Virginia's horse country, but its influence extends far and wide. There aren't many firms on this list that count the U.S. Capitol or a Parisian hotel or the Smithsonian among its notable works, mixed in with the needs of discerning residential clients or the vanguard of American universities. Can there be a unified philosophy for this sort of firm, working at so many different scales and for different ends? Jacobsen's team thinks so—and it has to do with architecture being the measure of its parts. The Bray House, Jacobsen's Featured Project, is a notable example of pavilion-like forms assembled in an unforgettable conversation between an old and new.

4/20/24

Simon Jacobsen will be speaking at The National Building Museum’s “The Big Draw” lecture series.

Time: 2:00pm

Main auditorium.

FREE Admission.

National Building Museum

401 F Street NW
Washington, DC 20001
info@nbm.org
202.272.2448

10/2/23

Richmond, Virginia.

Jacobsen will be speaking and signing his new book at The Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University. Reception to follow.

Time: 12:30 PM. For more information, contact the museum at https://icavcu.org/.

07/2023

Jacobsen to be on Awards Jury.

Simon Jacobsen will be a judge in the Architecture Category for the annual Home & Design Awards. The winners of both Grand and Merit awards will be showcased in the 2024 Idea Book, which stays on newsstands for a full year, and announced at a festive celebration in Fall 2023. Deadline for entries is June 1, 2023.

***Lecture and book signing with Simon Jacobsen***

Join Simon Jacobsen, founding partner of Jacobsen Architecture, LLC, for a look at the last years and legacy of his father Hugh Newell Jacobsen, FAIA (1929–2021), their collaboration over the past 20 years, and his eventual succession as Principal and owner of the firm.
Jacobsen’s new 224-page book, *American Modern Home*, will be on hand for purchasing before the talk and signing afterward. The book, an expression of eloquent design featuring interiors, exteriors, and gardens, examines twelve of the firm’s recent houses around the United States.

02/16/2023

“Hugh Newell Jacobsen and The Reluctant Path Forward.”

District Architecture Center

421 7th Street NW

Washington, DC 20004

6:00PM-8:00PM

Price: $25 for Non-Members

$15 for Members

$10 for Students

Registration required-CLICK HERE

For more info

please CLICK HERE

11/20/22

Book signing event at the Jacobsen designed Boxwood Winery.

Join the firm in celebrating the new book and have any number of fine varieties of Boxwood’s inventory of award winning estate grown wines. Simon Jacobsen has just completed “American Modern Home” published by Rizzoli and will be selling signed copies of the new book.

Sunday Nov. 20th

Boxwood Winery

Middleburg, Virginia.

12:00pm-2:30pm

RSVP

events@jacobsenarchitecture.com

11/12/22

Book signing and talk.

Peter Miller Books

Post Alley, 304 Alaskan Way South, Seattle.

Time: TBA

Join Simon Jacobsen in Seattle at Peter Miller Books for the debut of his new book “American Modern Home.” Mr. Jacobsen will be signing books and giving a brief talk about the collaborative work with his father, the late Hugh Newell Jacobsen. For further information call Peter Miller Books at (206) 441-4114 or write Books@jacobsenarchitecture.com.

10-26-22

Simon Jacobsen’s “American Modern Home” ranks #1 on Amazon.com in the Residential Architecture category.

10/25/2022

Simon Jacobsen’s new book on the firm’s recent work “American Modern Home” lands in stores October 25th.

Readers who wish to purchase a personalized or signed copy may now do so through the Jacobsen Architecture website by clicking here…

9/2022

Simon Jacobsen designs a mirrored pavilion for his father’s final resting place.

One hour West of Washington, D.C. in the enclave of Delaplane, Virginia, lay the final resting place of Hugh Newell Jacobsen, Architect. The mirrored pavilion was designed and constructed using many of Hugh Jacobsen’s unique details and methods. Clad in single pieces of Low-E Starphire mirrors, it is traditionally framed, like many of his houses, in 2x4 and 2x6 framing and plywood sheathing. Inside, Hugh’s ashes sit contained on a stainless steel and bluestone plinth.

The proportions of the little pavilion are those of significance to the Great Man himself: It is 6’-0” wide (His height), it is 3’-11” deep (his birthday) and it faces Michigan and Washington at each gable.

The mirrored mausoleum resides on the estate of his son and business partner.

12/2022

At long last Hugh Jacobsen’s memorial is being planned. The venue will be at The National Building Museum in Washington. With the recurring nemesis of COVID, plans were made and then hastily cancelled.

Date: TBA

Where: National Building Museum

2022

May 12, 6:00PM

Taste for Design, Spyhouse, Secret Ingredients

Gaggenau dinner and discussion

Métier Restaurant

1015 7th St NW, Washington, DC

Simon Jacobsen will be on the panel discussion sponsored by Gaggenau, Home & Design and Michelin and will be discussing his recent project Spy House, the clever use of Gaggenau appliances and his upcoming book. The event will be at the Michelin starred Métier Restaurant and Chef Eric Ziebold and Joan Dempsey will also be present.

Release date: September 20, 2022.

“American Modern Home” by Simon Jacobsen.

12 recent houses by the internationally acclaimed architecture and interior design firm Jacobsen Architecture. Guided by Hugh Newell Jacobsen and his son, Simon, the firm distills vernacular building types into designs that feel grounded in history yet are fervently forward-thinking.

Fall 21/Spring 21

$75

11 x 11

224 pages

Hardcover with jacket

225 photographs

Pre-order yours at Amazon by clicking here…

December 2021

Dempsey+Less+blue-231-1.jpg — Gaggenau Appliances

…to spotlight the Spy House kitchen in new ad campaign. Demonstrations, interviews with owners and architects.

March 6th, 2021

Hugh Newell Jacobsen, one of the firm’s founders, has died.

New York Times Obituary here

2020

Simon Jacobsen was interviewed by Thom Filicia (Style Network and HGTV’s “Queer Eye for The Straight Guy” and Bravo’s “Get A Room with Carson & Thom”) on his Instagram show “House Calls with Thom Filicia” Much was discussed from process of designing and his current projects. You can view the show here: House Calls.