The client – a couple with two young children relocating from New York City – wanted a contemporary home but were limited by strict covenants and restrictions imposed by their Homeowner’s association. The Architect’s solution synthesized these opposites: the house would reflect both the rustic and reductive, satisfying the subdivisions conservative building constraints but creating the clean, contemporary home environment the owner desired.
From a distance, the 6,400 sf home evokes a traditional silhouette in the western idiom using a series of separate gable roof forms to reduce apparent mass on this flat 15-acre site. The building is placed adjacent to an existing cottonwood grove; the mature trees provide an anchor to the site and serve as a scaling device.
An earth toned, cast-in-place concrete base, wood siding, deep overhangs and articulated eaves anchor the house in the context of its neighborhood. On approach, however, the house expresses its modernity with careful detailing where a taught wood and glass skin is interrupted by copper clad projections. Steel columns support subtly tapering overhangs that resist formal convention, opening the house to views across the valley.
Inside, traditional western forms are articulated with a reductive palate of steel, glass, wood and concrete. Highly crafted sensibilities allow each material to be expressed individually within a spacious, light filled interior environment. The overall effect is a vernacular building from a distance which, when experienced, reveals its roots in modernism.
