long bar

Ogrydziak Prillinger Architects have designed this 2,400 sq. ft. house for a young family moving from the city to the country. The design strategy attempts to maximize the exposure of the interior of the house to the lightly forested surroundings. The site has a steepl slope, covered with mature oak trees that provides an ample privacy screen for an essentially transparent house. The Architects decision was to elongate the primary space into a long bar. The bar is embedded along the slope, its roof tilted to match the site gradient in an effort to merge the primary mass of the house into the landscape. This space is also mirrored on its long axis to create an outside room bounded by a high retaining wall. The entry to the house also operates as a cut through the house, demarcating the public and private spaces. Here, exterior space penetrates the interior, and the procession from outside-in-and-outside-again is is fully appreciated, merging the house into the landscape. The walls and roof are considered as a continuous skin that wraps the interior with varying degrees of transparency.