A successful house fulfills the program goals and then some. For this large new house, thoughtful siting and planning connects all key interiors to the existing exceptional tree features as well as to a new landscape designed in concert with the house. Viewed from the exterior, tethering the house to the mature tall trees forming thick woods to the S and a well-defined copse of oaks on the NE serves to bring down the scale and make it appear that the house has been there all along. Siting the house closer to the edge than the center, preserves the center for a spacious lawn to the east, yielding an intimate decorative garden to the west that is viewed and accessed from all principal social spaces arrayed N-S.

The large house (14,000 sf) with the comforts and intimacy of a much smaller one, connects to different landscape environs at each quadrant, so that circulation through the house is always an act of discovery, and an enticement to continue the procession into the gardens, or indeed into the woods.

In Collaboration With:
Arentz Landscape Architects
Victoria Hagan Interiors
William Wheeler, Architectural Design Consultant
Orsman Design, Lighting Consultant
Horizon Builders, General Contractor

Photography by Richard Williams and Richard Arentz