Developed by Fougeron Architecture, Jackson Family Retreat is nestled on a wood web site next to a creek and dominated by steep canyon walls in California’s Huge Sur region. When the owners initial commissioned the architects to construct this fabulous house, regional governing agencies have been intent on leaving the land as it was-overgrown and uninhabited. Nonetheless, functioning with ten consultants over 3 and a half years, all the essential requirements have been met to build a modernist 2,500-square-foot two-bedroom household retreat right here.
The structure sits lightly on the land, respecting the ecologically fragile nature of the website, and is precisely attuned to its forces. A formal object in a natural context-like Stevens’s jar on a hill-the house holds its own in this tall, cavernous spot, neither dominating it nor dwarfed by it.
The constructing is composed of 4 volumes created of distinct interwoven components that produce visually and spatially complex exterior and interior spaces. The main volume, clad in standing seam copper, runs parallel to the canyon. Its thin butterfly roof sits delicately above a band of extruded channel glass, connected to the roof structure by thin rods that are invisible from the exterior. These rodlike columns, which become wider as they go additional down into the walls, are utilized to lift the complete structure two and a half feet off the ground, minimizing its influence on the land. At each ends of the house, two-story clear windows frame views of the redwoods and the canyon ridge, bringing in vistas of the sky-sunny by day, starry by evening.
A 1-story volume in the front half of the residence comprises all of the service functions-cooking, bathing, washing-even though a custom steel-and-glass volume at the back opens to views of the creek. The fourth volume, the staircase, clad in stucco, acts as each the house”s seismic structural brace and a visual foil to the shimmering, transparent volumes floating around it.
Images: Richard Barnes