This house has four bedrooms, 1,740
sf of conditioned space and a one car garage. The house is on track to receive
LEED Platinum Certification. It has a HERS rating of 49 and many
"green" features, including FSC wood, reclaimed trim from demolished
barns, no conventional turf (no irrigation) and low flow plumbing fixtures.
Every area in this house is used (there is neither an attic nor a basement).
The concept for the
house is a matchbox (hence the name), in which the four inner quadrants slip
past one another within the outer sleeve. The house is meant to read as
an urban cottage in the woods and therefore in its approaching elevation it has
the geometry of an iconic 4 sided house. To articulate this even more, it is
raised on an inset concrete plinth, which expresses the bottom two edges (and
therefore fifth side) that would normally touch the ground.