With a love of a pristine land comes a respect for it, and one way to celebrate this is to design a house that commands views, but not attention.
This holiday home nestles on a high plateau surrounded by mountain peaks and deciduous forest. Architects Dirk Danker and Jim Nagle, of Nagle Hartray Architecture, designed the home in the post-and-beam style as this allowed a high glazing-to-structure ratio a major plus for a house intended to celebrate its surroundings.
The house comprises three principal forms. The most dramatic is a two-storey pavilion that contains most public spaces the living room, dining area, kitchen and breakfast room, with a study-den in the loft. Running alongside this volume, a gallery links the building to two smaller, two-level structures that house a media room, bedrooms and the garage.
"Sliding doors on three sides and two levels of the pavilion infill the post-and-beam design, so when all doors are pulled open, the interiors merge with the outdoors," says Danker.
Despite sitting on a promontory, the house is grounded within the rugged setting, largely due to the architect's choice of naturally weathering materials, most sourced locally.