Vertical Branching House

On a 90-acre landscape preservation reserve near the town of Claverack in New York’s Hudson Valley, surrounded by expanses of farmland and wooded hills rising 700 feet, two rural retreat houses are proposed. One is a vertical branching house inspired by the towering pine trees beside the lakeside. The other, situated on a steep hill, is a horizontal branching house suspended between the trees.

In over 2,000 square feet, the spaces ascend in seven planes, analogous to the ideas in Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, rising from a compact 25-by-28-foot base to 30 feet in height. The northernmost volume extends around the angled stair to a skylight that captures the shifting shadows of the pines. Glass recesses throughout the structure invite light deep into the interiors, echoing Leonard Cohen’s lyric, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

This design eliminates corridors and instead creates intimate nooks and crannies, as desired by the client. The entry porch ramps up to a glass-fronted doorway. The interiors in Pine, Birch, and Mahogany include a conversation pit, a lake-facing kitchen and dining space, a library, and a music area on the upper levels. The exterior is clad in vertical cedar slats and Corten steel soffits and lookouts.

Within the broader bounds of the Hudson River estuary watershed, both houses will be constructed by local craftsmen. Geothermal heating and cooling, natural lighting, and cross-ventilation minimize energy use. Responsibly sourced materials are prioritized. Over time, these materials will patina naturally, embracing the principles of “Wabi-Sabi.”

While the vertical branching house rises from the ground looking at the lake through the big thick branching trees, the horizontal branching house hovers above in a rock crevice. All of the site’s landscape will be preserved instead of a parcel subdivision (which is typical in that area). Therefore, the entire project becomes an ecological manifesto: maintaining natural flora and fauna for the future while offering wooden retreats nestled carefully into the existing tree-filled Hudson Valley landscape.