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Text description provided by the architects. The home is situated on a 30-acre wooded parcel in the town of North East, New York. The site’s defining features are a ridge at the property’s highest elevation and a large meadow 15′ below. The meadow is ringed by trees and has long, westerly views out to the Catskill Mountains. The ridge to the east is dotted with wildflowers and rocky outcroppings. Access to the house is via a winding driveway that climbs the steep eastern edge of the site and terminates at the top of the ridge. In addition to the main home, the design brief also called for a guest house and pool.
At the outset of the project, the determination was made to locate the house at the lower meadow level and along the baseline of the ridge, eliminating the need to clear existing trees. This shielded the building from prevailing winds and views at the higher arrival elevation, providing a serene and secluded environment for the home. With the house positioned, a 20′ wide x 100′ long adjacent section of land was removed from the downslope side of the ridge. The excavated area was then retained by a cast-in-place concrete wall, creating a flat pad between the house and the ridge. This space functions as an intimate outdoor room and forecourt, offering a contrasting experience to the wide-open meadow setting to the building’s west.
To foreground the colors and textures of the site, the home and guest house were developed as muted, black gable-shaped structures. This was achieved by taking a totalized approach to the exterior materials, cladding the buildings’ facades and roof surfaces in the same black corrugated metal. The waves of corrugation give a subtle texture to the forms. Open eaves at the roof express black painted rafter tails, supplying another layer of detail and rhythm to the project. Large expanses of glass offer views through the house to the landscape beyond, adding visual interest and depth to the building’s simple barn-like shape. Orientation-wise, the long exposures of the home run parallel to the ridge, maximizing opportunities for views out to the east and west. The entrance hall is centrally located in plan and creates a buffer between two primary bedrooms at the north end of the building and the communal spaces to the south. Two smaller bedrooms bookend the southern side of the house.
Floating in the communal spaces are four linear blocks of millwork wrapped in a warm Douglas fir veneer. The blocks establish boundaries between public and private zones and contain essential components of the house. Each has a slightly different character in terms of their height, proportion, and materiality. Their functions are: housing the attic stair, enclosing the living room fireplace, providing kitchen counter surfaces, and concealing the kitchen appliances. The kitchen counter and fireplace blocks incorporate cast-in-place concrete elements for their durability and fire-retardant properties. In addition to the wood-clad millwork, the interior palette is composed of white walls and ceilings, gray concrete floors, and dark bronze aluminum sliding door frames. To add variation to spaces within the home, the ceiling above the living, kitchen, and dining room has been given a gable-shaped vault, while the private rooms have more intimate ceiling heights. The vault’s eaves and peak are softened into gentle curves, diffusing the light spilling onto its surfaces, giving it a cloud-like appearance. On either side of the common areas are two 16′ wide banks of sliding glass doors, providing access and immersive views of the meadow to the west and the ridge to the east. The pool and guest house are located in the meadow, while an outdoor dining space is situated between the house and the ridge.
