Project Details
- Project Name
- Ephemeral Edge
- Location
-
NY ,United States
- Project Types
- Custom
- Project Scope
- New Construction
- Size
- 1,950 sq. feet
- Shared by
- Hanley Wood
- Consultants
-
Structural Engineer: Hage Engineering,Geotechnical Engineer: Crawford and Associates,General Contractor: Quadresign
- Project Status
- Built
From the February 2019 issue of ARCHITECT:
Perhaps the only thing more difficult than describing something inspired by transience is building it. That’s the challenge New York–based Dean/Wolf Architects set for itself for its 2012 Progressive Architecture Award–winning house, Ephemeral Edge. Now complete, the house captures a great deal of fleeting poetry in its realized form.
The 2,000-square-foot single-story structure sits on the north edge of a manmade pond in a forest clearing near the hamlet of Austerlitz, about 110 miles north of New York City. The clearing was created by a developer about a decade ago, and its artificial origin was not lost on principal Kathryn Dean, AIA: “It is beautiful, but in kind of a strange way,” she says. “The trees have really tall trunks but all the leaves are at the top.” Dean abstracted the ever-changing and particular light and shadow that the trees create to infuse the house with the ephemerality that gives it its name.
The plan is configured as a simple arcing form that follows the curve of the pond’s edge. The torqued shed roof rises and falls to vary the interior spaces. The north wall of the house is mostly solid, save for glazing to indicate the entry and a sculptural aperture that creates a sightline between the kitchen and driveway. The south wall facing the pond is floor-to-ceiling glass.
The entry is near the middle of the floor plan’s arc, and the slope of the roof plane tilts to open the house toward the public spaces (kitchen and living areas) to the east and to tighten the perspective toward the bedroom at the west. “There aren’t any doors, but there is privacy between four different areas,” Dean says. “You basically weave around planes in space.”
The dining room sets the tone for the house upon entering. A custom-designed table’s horizontal wood surface echoes the still surface of the pond beyond and cantilevers from an irregularly patterned series of 1-inch-wide steel legs that penetrate the tabletop and emerge to become candleholders. Similar steel bars—rebar, in fact—to the east of the table sit in front of a sandblasted, warm-gray acrylic partition that separates dining room from kitchen. Light filters in from a skylight above.
The rebar is part of the house’s unconventional structural system, inspired by the site’s tall, thin trees. Three sets of steel rebar separate the main spaces within the house and provide the primary vertical structural support; the floor and ceiling planes cantilevered from these ghost piers. “It’s like using a concrete wall without the concrete,” is how the structural engineering team from Hage Engineering describes it. The piers were designed by Dean and precisely laser cut and fit together by the contractor. Each is capped with a skylight that allows light to permeate interior spaces. Dean notes that the house’s radial layout leads to a sundial effect over the course of the day, with each room being illuminated at different times: the master bath gets light in the morning, the kitchen at midday, and the living room in the afternoon.
The exterior is primarily sheathed in corrugated Galvalume siding, with flat aluminum panels used for the soffits and the sculpted window surround; the same panels are used on the dining room ceiling. The color palette is light, and includes white marble countertops in the kitchen, white stone flooring in the dining room, and white oak floors with a light gray stain. Most of the interior walls and ceilings are polished plaster. “All the materials have a sheen of one kind or another,” Dean says. “Because the house faces south, you get light bouncing off the pond and dancing on the ceiling all the time.”
That play of light as it moves through the rooms makes Ephemeral Edge an ever-changing space that evokes the impermanence of its name. —Edward Keegan, AIA
Project Credits
Project: Ephemeral Edge, Austerlitz, N.Y.
Client: Withheld
Architect: Dean/Wolf Architects, New York . Kathryn Dean, AIA, (principal-in-charge); Chris Kroner (associate partner); Charles Wolf, Zachary Rousou (project team)
Structural Engineer: Hage Engineering
Geotechnical Engineer: Crawford and Associates
Size: 2,000 square feet
Cost: Withheld
Materials and Sources
Acrylic: Total Plastics
Polycarbonate: Polygal
Bathroom Fixtures: Associated Fabrication (sinks); Dornbracht (faucets); D-Line (accessories)
Cabinets: Tim Cook
Exterior Walls/Systems: Galvalume (siding); AMD Fiberglass Grating (fiberglass decking); Maloya Laser (custom stainless/cable railing); Anzor (cable hardware)
Furniture: B&B Italia; Peter Superti Furniture (custom table)
Kitchen Appliances/Fixtures: La Canache (stove); Zephyr (hood); SubZero (refrigerator); Kallis (sink)
Laser Cut Steel Structure: Benson Steel
Lighting: Ingo Maurer
Light Switches: Legrand
Radiators: Slant Fin w/custom expanded metal cover
Roofing: EPDM
Roofing Paint: Sherwin Williams (Silver Brite)
Steel Paint: Benjamin Moore Super Spec HP DTM
Stone/Tile: Stone Source (Olympian White Danby—stone kitchen counter; Celador—dining and kitchen floor; I Colori tilebath floors)
Venetian Plaster: Ron Decavalcanti
Windows/Doors: Duratherm; Tim Cook (custom front door)
From the February 2012 issue of ARCHITECT, part of the coverage of the winners of the 59th Annual Progressive Architecture Awards:
Site The edge of a constructed pond, on a wooded south-sloping hill.
Program Single-family weekend retreat.
Solution Designed for a family of five, this 1,950-square-foot weekend retreat sits in the outskirts of Austerlitz, a town about a three-hour drive upstate from New York City. The bucolic site lies at the convergence of two diverse conditions: a forested hillside and a constructed pond, both overlooking a panoramic vista in the distance. In order to capture the views, New York–based Dean/Wolf Architects curved the house in plan, allowing the building’s steel structure to sit on concrete foundations along the pond’s edge, an effect which impressed the jury. “What makes this project attractive is the way the building embraces the pond,” juror Joseph Rosa said. Except for a patio that bisects the house, from pond to forest, the forest-side elevation is kept mostly opaque, directing the eye out through the lakeside façade. Glazing on that elevation capitalizes on the site’s over-water views; the interior is partitioned such that each room creates a sight line to the center of the pond and beyond. —John Gendall