Stowe, VT | 2016
Trefoil House interacts with three different landscapes -- a mountain slope, an orchard, and a body of water, integrated through a trefoil circulation loop centered on a three-sided hearth -- providing wheelchair accessibility for the client's aging parents and allowing them to experience each landscape at will. The Trefoil House repurposes existing foundations for tract housing, tracing a new diagram from their remains.
The Trefoil House inherits a pre-existing partial foundation, and traces a new diagram with the hearth as a structural and narrative generator: The house is built out from its triangular core as three squares joined at the corners. The three-sided hearth is used as a central program driver, producing a continuous trefoil circulation loop around the perimeter of each square and providing a central point of orientation while allowing for the house to spread into the landscape. Common spaces are enclosed in glass, while private spaces are shielded with sculpted louvers to differentiate the rotationally symmetric plan. A 150 foot long curtainwall wraps continuously around six sides of the house. The trefoil circulation allows for an unbroken perceptual experience of the pristine site, but critically also allows for an entirely wheelchair accessible upper level in order to accommodate the client’s elderly parents and an aging-in-place philosophy.
Two parallel driving forces propelled all design decisions.
First, the desire to perceptually bring the incredible view into the interior. To accomplish this, all visible thresholds, sills, and headers to distinguish the passage from interior to exterior are eliminated.
Second, the need for complete accessibility on the upper level. The client and his parents work in the geriatric healthcare industry and are intimately acquainted with the architectural needs of the elderly. To allow for uninterrupted wheelchair access, thresholds, sills, and teak shower pans are flush, and the entire trefoil circulation path is accessible, broad, and clearly defined.
This productive convergence of perceptual and pragmatic needs allowed for design decisions from the scale of the detail to the scale of the building parti to satisfy both drives at once.
To resist -30 degree winter temperatures, a poured concrete radiant floor slab and coated insulated glass were paired. The interior material palette is limited to cedar, polished black concrete, brass, and walnut.
Project Credits:
Architectural, Interior and Furniture Design: Jeremy Jih
Contractor: Cypress Woodworks
Engineering: Harris Structural Engineering
Published in:
Boston Home
Archdaily
Dezeen