Capturing the Forest

The MOUNTAIN:House, located in the Appalachian Mountain region of northern New England, is designed as a dramatic composition of simple, no-nonsense materials, composed with inspiration drawn from wood sheds, barns, and rough-hewn mountain lodges. The design fulfilled the client’s desire for material authenticity and simplicity, combining a direct engagement with the forest. The intimate, 2,000-square-foot house provides a surprisingly spacious interior, with floor-to-roof-ridge windows that slice the home vertically inviting views that reveal the forest—from stream bed and trunk, to upper canopy—and intensify the seasonally changing light and colors of the surrounding mixed deciduous and conifer forest.  The home becomes the locus and centering of the clients’ passions for skiing, mountaineering, and solitude in the woods.

Modernist Cabin

Set along a time-worn logging trail perched above the Saco River, the MOUNTAIN:House is built on five acres of densely forested, steeply sloping land, almost completely surrounded by the White Mountains National Forest near New Hampshire’s Presidential Range. The year-round home was constructed for avid mountain enthusiasts, who wished to closely inhabit the lush forest and be intimately connected to the surrounding elements and materials. The forest consequently stimulated a highly customized design language that is at once contemporary and timeless.  The original undeveloped site was traced by an abandoned logging pull-way along which the new house is organized. The two-story internal breezeway runs the length of this old path through the home made from local slate, raw concrete panels, and exposed cedar plywood. It divides the residence in two, separating the main living quarters from the more utilitarian workshop and garage. The 24-foot interior traverse provides deep central light, exceptional cross ventilation, and ever-present forest slope views.

A Solstice Clock

The core thermal mass of the hearth is punctuated by a vertical window that aligns through the home with identical openings in both the east and west facades, acting as an oversized solar calendar. The entire house is oriented precisely to align with the sun’s annual transect on the Winter Solstice. On this pivotal day—and on this day only—a channel of last-light from the setting sun passes through the house from west to east, marking the winter solstice with a surreal rectangle of projected light on the snowy white surface of the mountain-side behind the home.  The living, dining, and kitchen spaces share one high single volume anchored by the tall hearth-wall of slate and corten steel. The hearth holds not only a traditional Rumford-style fireplace, but an interior barbecue and wood storage for the central wood stove. The central hearth complements the passive solar heating design and radiant in-floor hydronic system throughout.

 

 

 

The Spirit of Detail

INTERSTICE focused on small details in order to unify the home with its site through a “total design” approach including furnishings and fixtures. The Winter Solstice aperture is echoed in the high-backed maple plywood chairs designed for the dining area, meant to create a mini “room” around the seated guests within the dramatically tall dining space. Custom steel work by local craftspersons, including composite columns made from the splitting of preexisting conifers, stairway handrails, and loft guardrails lights were all made of tool-blackened steel, and contributed to a variety of built-in, integral features—lighting, benches, display, storage, and sliding screens.  These features add a level of touch to the house that contrasts with the simple expanses of raw plywood, bleached pine ceiling boards, and hand-troweled plaster that dominate the interior expression of the simple home. The exterior concrete panels and cedar plywood cladding continue inside along the breezeway where the loft stair floats mysteriously—seemingly without support—up to a transparent glass bridge overhead and a skylight that transverses the entire width of the breezeway, bathing the space in the changing light of the day and season. Each tread is supported on concealed steel blade risers bolted to the structural wall of the house. Throughout the more private rooms, the local materials predominate—scaled to add texture and a sensual authenticity—and creating a fluid connection between interior space and the dense forest beyond.

 

 

 

 

 

• Landscape
• Residential