The owner of this sloped pristine lot nestled in a beech forest wanted a house with a modernist aesthetic that evoked living immersed in the wood’s treetops. She also required a single level open design to incorporate her love of books and various spaces for her large adult family. Drawing inspiration from Mies van der Rohe’s Villa Tugendhat, we took advantage of the site’s unique characteristics to address the client’s parameters, exploiting the pronounced drop from road level to forested ravine. An imposing 14-feet-high stone wall faces the country road. The natural material serves as a first reflection of the wooded landscape while offering full privacy for the dramatic light-filled house behind it. A set of imposing wooden doors open into a private oasis: an enclosed courtyard that offers a serene space for intimate entertaining or quiet contemplation, particularly when filled with the natural light of the moon on a starlit evening. In contrast to the opaque stone wall, on the interior side of the courtyard, a screen of glass windows and doors opens into a lofty, funnel-shaped entrance gallery. Broad at one end and narrow at the other, it is fully articulated with floor-to-ceiling cherry bookcases. Two broad openings punctuate the entry hall’s bookcases, leading to a volumetric open plan dining and living room. The lofty space faces the forest beyond with a wall of glass that overlooks the western view of treetops and the ravine below. A double-sided fireplace rises through the trapezoidal space, separating dining from living room. While the cross-axial emphasis from courtyard to wall of windows creates a journey of surprise and discovery, it also echoes the house’s unique spatial dynamism – a longitudinal trapezoid whose storeys fall from street to ravine-level, but is always eye-level with some portion of the beech tree stand. Beyond the dining room, a family style kitchen with fireplace connects to a screened-in porch for dining in the forest’s overstory. At the very opposite end of the open plan central space, an intimate library is wrapped by a deck for al fresco enjoyment of the surrounding scene. The house’s lower level answers the client’s needs by mirroring the clean geometry and spatial organization above. A long hall tiled with tuscan terracotta gives access to a full caretaker’s apartment for eventual aging in place, alongside two interconnected guestrooms for grandchildren, a dark room, and a storage area. The western face of these lower level living areas have similarly uninterrupted views of the woods through floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors that give access to the beech stand. The house’s overall trapezoidal volume becomes unconventional harmony – between the tapering main and lower floors and between interior light and the surrounding forest.

Photography by Bob Narod