At home in mansions, office designs

BUILDING SOMETHING: A4 Architecture is a full-service firm whose projects range from renovations to Newport mansions, residential projects and commercial redesigns. Pictured above, from left, are: Managing Director Ross Cann and architectural designers Daniel L’Esperance and Martin Wimberly. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
BUILDING SOMETHING: A4 Architecture is a full-service firm whose projects range from renovations to Newport mansions, residential projects and commercial redesigns. Pictured above, from left, are: Managing Director Ross Cann and architectural designers Daniel L’Esperance and Martin Wimberly. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

Even if you’ve never heard of A4 Architecture Inc. of Newport, you may be familiar with some of founder Ross Sinclair Cann’s work.
Before he founded A4, Cann worked for a large firm with big corporate clients, including Bank of America and AT&T.
For those national giants, Cann projects included prototype retail designs for buildings such as bank branches and phone stores that could be deployed in malls or on retail strips across the country.
“Those were small-scale projects with big impacts in number,” Cann said. “Now with my own firm we are at the other end of the spectrum: larger projects with a more local impact.”
Cann decided to strike out on his own and found A4 when his employer, at the time working on renovations to Newport Hospital, decided to focus exclusively on health care facilities.
While he didn’t mind doing a variety of corporate projects, the thought of only working on one kind of building wasn’t what Cann had in mind.
In A4, Cann created a full-service firm whose projects range from renovations to Newport mansions, such as Oakwood, to more conventional residential projects and redesigning shops, offices and other commercial buildings.
So far, roughly 80 percent of A4’s work is in Rhode Island, and of that, about 80 percent is on Aquidneck Island, but Cann is also licensed in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York.
“We take on any challenge that comes to us if it is interesting,” Cann said. Perhaps the biggest difference between working on corporate retail prototypes and historic houses, Cann said, is location.
A model phone-store design, for example, needs to be flexible enough to be replicated in a variety of settings and locations across the country, while building a private residence is all about site-specific demands.
That’s especially true in Newport, where history, tradition and sensibility are big issues and neighbors are not shy about letting their feelings about a project be heard.
Historic-district protections, strict land-use controls and the challenge of fitting in with lots of famous architecture can be stifling to some architects, but Cann said it can also bring positives.
The context of a historic neighborhood and the limits imposed by zoning, view corridors and wetlands can be inspiring, he said, just as other art forms can benefit from set forms. “I generally find it stimulating and it enhances creativity to have limitations,” Cann said.
A physics major as a college undergraduate who became interested in architecture partly as a result of learning about Newport’s signature shingle-style homes, Cann said he tries to bring the best elements of classical and contemporary design to projects.
In addition to adding a new dimension to professional projects, Newport’s history also provides community opportunities not available in every city.
Cann is a founding chairman of the Newport Architectural Forum, which celebrates the city’s architecture, and a member of Washington Square Roots, a group working to restore Washington Square to its place as a central civic gathering place.
Architecture firms across the country, and especially those in Rhode Island, suffered in the recession, but Cann said A4 probably endured better than most.
Partly, that is because they never over-expanded in the boom and also because they were quick to embrace new digital modeling technology, which allowed them to keep things streamlined, he said.
“We were fairly lucky in that we had never gotten that large in the run-up [to the recession] and we were very technologically engaged, adopting building-information modeling,” Cann said. “Newport was not affected quite as much as other areas of the country, particularly outer suburbs.”
Looking ahead, Cann said A4 is working on three substantial projects still in the planning stages and hopefully will be ready to go to permitting soon.
While most big projects they are working on now are in hospitality and multifamily residential, Cann said institutional projects hold a lot of potential. The firm has recently completed small projects for Brown University in Providence and the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport.
“We like to think of building long-term relationships instead of one-time transactions,” Cann said. “When you work with a client for the third or fourth time, it becomes like a comfortable dance between two partners.” •

COMPANY PROFILE
A4 Architecture Inc.
OWNER: Ross Sinclair Cann
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Architectural services
LOCATION: 320 Thames St., Newport
EMPLOYEES: 4
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 2004
ANNUAL SALES: NA

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