Dwell 2015 11

dwellings
“ It’s a good demonstration
of the fundamental
sustainability of architecture
to build something very
dense, compact, and
for the long term. Nothing
here is going to wear
out for a hundred years.”
—Chris Bardt, architect
that it have a wholeness—an openness, an airiness,
and a centeredness—but for it to still retain a feeling
of intimacy,” Paschke says. “When I first went to Chris
I said, ‘Can we build a two-car-garage-sized cottage?’”
Bardt and Ryan started with a 25-foot cube for the
house’s volume, which gave the space enough height
to balance the compact floor plan. A number of design
decisions informed its faceted roofline: window placement,
the desire to create views from the sleeping
nook, the positioning of the skylight, and the integration
of the chimney with the overall shape (a design
detail worked out in a series of cardboard models).
Lastly, the architects clad the entire structure in the
same material, Alaskan yellow shakes, which determined
the necessary minimum roof pitch. The ceiling
inside the house follows the same faceted lines. “We
liked the idea that when you look at any side of the
cottage, it’s not a gable—it looks more like a carved
gemstone,” Ryan says. “In the end it’s not a shape that
we’re necessarily making because we like the shape;
it’s about all these ‘pressures.’” Bardt adds: “It couldn’t
be a box with a roof on it. It had to transcend. It had
to be a rock in the landscape.”
The house’s formal “front door” ushers visitors
through a low-slung entry that opens to a soaring interior—a
classic architectural trick borrowed from Frank
Lloyd Wright that pumps up the spatial drama. With
the kitchen, living-dining area, and sleeping nook all
in one room, Ryan and Bardt played a delicate balancing
act to ensure the house felt consistent. The architects
established an eight-foot-tall datum for the built
elements, based on standard measurements of offthe-shelf
windows and doors, to help keep costs >
102 NOVEMBER 2015 DWELL