The November issue of Walter, the premier arts and culture magazine in Raleigh, N.C., is running a feature article I wrote on Vines Architecture, a firm known nationally for its admirable designs in the public realm. Titled “Design with Purpose: Vines Architecture,” the final product would not be as well-honed as it is without the skilled guidance and perseverance of Walter’s editor, Ayn-Monique Klahre. A+A is pleased to post it today:
Architecture in the public realm — buildings like libraries, museums and student centers — are pillars of a democratic society. And the architects who work in this realm are a breed apart. They create spaces where people can gather, places that are destinations for learning and study — buildings with the power to influence how we think.
Victor Vines and Bob Thomas are two such architects. They are the brains behind buildings like the Durham County Main Library, the new student center at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and Durham’s Emily K Center. “It’s idea-driven work that we’re nurturing in the public realm,” Thomas says.
Vines started a firm under his own name in 2008. Previously, he’d worked for The Freelon Group under the late Phil Freelon, best known as the architect of record for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture. Vines led the programming effort for that museum on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
After starting on his own, Vines soon began collaborating on designs with Bob Thomas — also a former Freelon employee — while Thomas was a principal at the modernist firm of Hobgood Architects in Raleigh.
“My hands were full establishing and creating a firm, and I don’t believe one person can do all that,” Vines says. “There was a closeness and a trust between the two firms as we collaborated together, and this was a way to bring on a key partner as a design director.”
Together they entered a public competition to design the Atlanta History Center. “We didn’t win, but we had a really good showing,” Thomas says.
They continued to collaborate, next on a competition to design a student center at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro. Their design project won this time. Shortly afterward, in 2010, Thomas left Hobgood Architects and joined Vines full time.
Today, Thomas is principal and director of design for the 17-person firm, while Vines serves as president and principal. “As design principal, I’m doing the conceptualizing and drawing, but someone else is doing the detailing,” Thomas says. He notes that 80% of their designers are graduates of North Carolina State University’s College of Design. “That’s the legacy of modernism, the College of Design and [professor emeritus] Roger Clark: Strong ideas are manifested in a rigorous commitment to detailing,” says Thomas.
For the A&T student center, their client originally envisioned a building capped with a rotunda. Instead, the modernists at Vines Architecture steered them toward a near-transparent, double-U-shaped structure that serves as connective tissue between two quadrangles on campus. “It’s knitting together the two greens, with a brick base that’s anchored to the agricultural roots of the university,” Thomas says. “The upper level is a delicate, lightweight, perforated space.”
The project, completed in 2017, put the firm on the map by demonstrating that Vines Architecture could conceive and execute a 150,000-square foot educational facility. Rated LEED Silver, it won an award from the North Carolina State Department of Construction. “We were recognized for its design, and that it embodies the idea of a complete piece of architecture — with rigor,” Thomas says.
When Vines Architecture designed the Durham County Main Library, which opened in 2021, the fi