Press Room: BALA Awards

Work of Atlanta Designer Lew Oliver Wins Prestigious BALA Awards

Roswell, GA: The work of Atlanta-based designer Lew Oliver has been honored with three prestigious BALA awards, the foremost residential design competition in the country. Sponsored annually by Professional Builder magazine and the National Association of Homebuilders, the awards showcase homes that demonstrate high design quality, succeed in the market, and exemplify the “Best in American Living. The contest, typically, brings in hundreds of applications from residential architects, designers, builders, developers, land planners, and interior designers across the U.S.

The panel of judges named Vickery, where Oliver is Town Architect, Best Suburban Smart Growth Neighborhood of the Year. The new town was master-planned by Andres Duany, founder and head of the New Urbanist movement and principal of the prestigious firm Duany Plater-Zyberk. Hedgewood Properties of Atlanta is the builder and developer. The mixed-use community of 600 homes features the best of Oliver’s design work, which is known for its architectural mastery, elegant composure, fine details, and poetic use of space. The town is surrounded by seventy acres of green space and filled with lush parks.

Oliver’s three-story “Founders Mill" in Woodstock Downtown, Georgia, took the silver for best single-family detached home in the 1,801-2,400 square feet category. The home is suitable for urban locations where the occupants want both privacy and a view of street life says Oliver. Inspired by nineteenth-century Savannah townhouses and based on the designer’s award-winning infill project in the historic Georgia town of Roswell, the home has a compact footprint (24 X 44) and offers the kind of openness and panoramic views that make even a small space feel expansive. It features tongue-and-groove walls and ceilings, enviable master suite, and a second-floor piano nobile.

Another of Oliver’s designs won the platinum award for best single-family detached home in the 3,001 to 4,000 square feet category. Reinstating classical elegance, the house features restrained brickwork, arched entry way with curved hood, hand-cut brick jack arches, and a roof composed of terra cotta tiles reclaimed from France. With its two-story foyer, formal dining room, state-of-the art kitchen, butler’s pantry with concealed door, and outdoor living room with freestanding fireplace, the house is an entertainer’s paradise. The home offers multiple intimate spaces as well, including a sunroom off the great room, artist studio over the garage, multiple balconies, and sumptuous French-paneled master with adjoining bath.

The three BALA awards are the most recent addition to a long line of national and international awards won by Oliver, which include Designer of the New American Home for the National Association of Homebuilders, Designer of the Southern Accents Show House, and Westin’s Best in Brand worldwide for five consecutive years. For the past two years, the designer’s work has swept the gold and silver awards at the Professionalism Awards of the Atlanta Homebuilders Association, with one of his towns winning, in addition, Community of the Year. Oliver has designed personal homes, banks, and hotels for clients from Florida to California, Colorado to Hawaii; and his work can be found in award-winning New Urbanist projects across the U.S. and abroad.

He is founder and CEO of Whole Town Solutions, a firm that provides builders and developers with the tools they need to create profitable high-quality towns and neighborhoods with but one source while enriching the landscape and fostering a model of healthy and sustainable growth.