Once upon a time this was a miners cottage clinging to the side of a mountain which falls into the Pacific Ocean. As time passed many accretions have formed around the original cottage, making the original patterns hard to discern amongst the modern house. It is a house many times recycled. Throughout the project-long conversation with the clients it was always felt that this pattern should be continued.
The project made seemingly small interventions (patches, mending, stripping out, drawing together) in the internal spaces, which resolved many uncomfortable bottlenecks and inefficiencies in planning and in the relationship of the internal spaces to the deck and to the ocean.
This is a house which embraces it's geographical position. It describes, by it's architecture, a life which is engaged with the climate and the topography. Views are carefully framed and still moments in the planning are crafted to bring particular aspects of the view, the light and the landscape into focus.
Photography by Kilian O'Sullivan