Elegant Simplicity

As visitors to Bethlehem's Christmas City Village stroll along the south end of Main Street, the steeply sloped wooden huts glow festively. Assembled during the city's annual open-air Christmas market, the Weihnacht huts accommodate a variety of vendors hawking treats and trinkets.

The challenging task of the huts' design fascinated Nik Nikolov, assistant professor of architecture, when the Downtown Bethlehem Association approached him with the pro-bono project three years ago.

The project had, as Nikolov describes, "two specific, very quirky" requirements: First, the 35 huts had to be easily stored, constructed, taken apart and stored again by volunteers each year; second, given the city's limited budget, they had to be inexpensive to build.

"It was a perfect sort of storm of problems and parameters," says Nikolov. "That perked me up completely because it's a really interesting problem."

Nikolov's solution was just as interesting—so much so that the Eastern Pennsylvania chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) recently recognized him with the AIA Award of Excellence, given by an independent jury of architects "for the best built project of 2015 that exhibits excellence in architectural design and promotes urban and environmental sensitivity."

Rather than collecting, snow and rain slide off the steeply sloped huts. The polycarbonate panel roofs allow heat from the sun to collect during daylight hours, warming the huts' interiors. The standard-length polycarbonate panels and 2-by-4-foot rafters require no cutting, and the triangles cut from each 4-by-8-foot panel of plywood are used in one of the structures, generating no waste. The materials for each hut cost approximately $280.

Nikolov feels a sense of satisfaction in seeing his simple and elegant design become a signifier of a local tradition. Recognition from the AIA for his work adds another level of gratification.

"This is strictly a professional award, and as such it's a great recognition for your colleagues to recognize that you did something worthy of being 'best of,'" says Nikolov.