The Tree-House Story

Each project begins with a story.  The Tree-House project tells the story of you as a child in an aerie in an oak grove that overlooks a pond. To evoke that story, your new living spaces would be organized along a long, glass “windshield wall" nested in the tree canopy. . . .

Owing to constraints related to wetland setbacks and deed restrictions, the program is organized on an existing house foundation.  But while the plan is constrained by regulatory matters, no such limitation constrains the volumes. The design is tuned to gather the site's compelling and dramatic views. 

The material palette is selected to achieve fitment/harmony with this unique site and its exposed ledge and stately oaks.  The new structure's base is rendered in a native stone cladding that echoes the ledge outcroppings.  Opaque walls are clad in naturally finished cedar shingles and rough-sawn cedar paneling. The "windshield" walls facing north and east are a simple rhythm of wood post : glass panel : wood post . . .   The standing seam, matte-finish grey roof is a reminder of  the tent canopy of your child's treehouse that stands in the back yard of the house where you once lived.  This folded canopy rises to a crescendo in the master suite to embrace the first light of dawn.

The project program is set forth as an assemblage of four distinct, but complementary volumes.  Each expresses one of four interrelated programmatic exigencies: 

Volume One: The Entry Piece.  The entry volume in the new house is a bridge sequence that begins in the parking area, rises to entrance in the 4-season room, and culminates at the view deck beyond.  

Volume Two: The Formal Living Area.  Volume Two adjoins the entrance bridge on the north and houses the formal living room and the library/music room.   Using a traditional New England gable roof vocabulary, this volume is primary owing to its scale and central placement.  When you arrive at the house at night, the monumental gable window of the library/music room is a welcoming lantern.  When you see it, know that you are back home. 

Volume Three:  The Functional Living Area.  Volume Three brackets the south side of the entry volume and houses the service functions of house—garage, mud room, kitchen, and family/dining room.  This volume is anchored by a massive stone hearth where the stone cladding of the foundation base is carried into the house. 

Volume Four:  The Private Living Area.  Volume Four houses the private living program, including the master bedroom suite.  In this volume, the traditional gable roof form is eschewed to fully realize the aspirations of the site.  Traditional, prosaic, formal vocabularies are forsaken for the house is to become “Tree-house” and fully embrace the poetic possibilities of this place.  To these ends, the horizontal eave line breaks in in a linear and volumetric counterpoint  to the rest of house, expressed as the exuberant rise of the eave to its termination at the northeast corner of the house.  The roof appears to over-extend, like a spinnaker, supported by long, slender posts echo the branches of the surrounding trees. 

Jim MacPhee. Lead Designer and Project Manager while in the employ of Black River Architects.

Harper Elm, General Contractor

Photographed by Edua Wilde