woodland reTREAT
The retreat acts as an urban family’s getaway home, nestled amongst a sloped woodland site in Berkshire, Massachusetts. Through it’s homes relationship to the natural surroundings, familiar relationships to the ground, sky, and the lines between interior/exterior become blurred and abstracted to create a space for reflection and reintroduction to the natural surroundings.
When exposed to a natural setting, stimulation occurs across multiple senses, making it difficult to fully digest and understand one’s environment beyond an initial superficial level. The home offers a lens to frame, guide, and warp one’s current perspective of the surrounding context. By limiting views and focusing less on the most “desirable” vantage points, apertures create curated moments where the ground, sky, and everything between are reimagined to offer a unique framing of nature.
The home is elevated off the ground, reinterpreting the motif of a treehouse, a place of wonder traditionally for children. Instead of picturesque framed views of the surrounding environment, skylights and windows create moments where views of the exterior are filtered to heighten one’s understanding of not only the nature around them but the interior experience as well.
At the core of the home, a centralized dining area is free of any exterior viewpoints, focusing the attention inward towards each other around the table as filtered light washes down from above. In the bathroom shower, the opposite occurs as one is contained within a confined space, with nothing but a circular frame of sky floating above. From the bedroom, a fireplace is tucked inside a window seat, whereas one lays in bed, the source which keeps them warm is layered over the seasonally changing landscape outside. Finally, in the main living space, a suspended spherical volume above diffuses an inviting natural glow as large windows frame an unobstructed view of the surrounding nature.
Throughout the home, the interior finishes remain neutral, allowing the framed views to the exterior and the clients art collection to remain the focal point of each room
A circular skylight within the shower acts as the primary light source during the day, while also allowing for an isolated perspective of the surrounding woods. As the seasons change, the exterior colors and weather blend seamlessly with the interior and become part of ones experience inside.
