Located in the quiet town of Bethel, New York on the edge of beautiful White Lake in the Catskills, this five-bedroom second home was designed with a nod toward the local “Adirondack” building tradition but with its feet firmly rooted in European modernist traditions. The building is caught between and is defined by two reclaimed New England granite walls that extend into the landscape to define entry, procession and ultimately the demarcation between the man-made and natural landscape. The ground floor is developed as a “free plan” which allows fluid and open movement within the public areas of the house and from those spaces out into the landscape. The private sleeping spaces are then compressed into the volume of the “roof” form which is clad entirely in copper. This sculptural, folded, private volume which floats above the living loft on timber columns is evocative of traditional residential or barn structures but is detailed in an abstract architectural minimalism. Lifting this architectural volume off the ground, the heavy timber columns, paradoxically lightening it.
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