CASE STUDY
RIDGE HOUSE
Tucked between a field and the forest’ s edge, Ridge House straddles a gentle gradient, offering a deeply contextual response to topography that sublimates the architecture to the land.
Superkül leveraged landform to optimize privacy and orient views, while the sculptural roof— the home’ s most defining and deferential feature— behaves like an extension of the terrain.
Designed to prioritize their clients’ desire for a signature sloping roof and four-season intimacy with nature, Ridge House is both open to and protected from the elements by virtue of its siting. Superkül devised a siting strategy that leads with the land and works with the property’ s constraints— a naturally occurring downslope, a high water table, and a prominent ironwood tree— to embed the house in its surroundings while optimizing visual and physical connections to the ironwood and pine forest at the edge of the clearing. The large sloping roof floats above the field’ s horizon, while the front façade remains concealed from the main road.
Ridge House privileges passive-first strategies as well as high-performance materials and systems. Deep-set overhangs shield the floor-to-ceiling triple glazing on the east and west elevations, mitigating solar gain in the warmer months and letting the lower winter sun’ s rays penetrate the home during the colder ones. Glass accordion doors on the west façade work in concert with retractable insect screens to create protected mid-door spaces from which to enjoy the outdoors comfortably, even during bug season. These fully operable doors, which enable powerful passive ventilation and significantly reduce the need for air conditioning in the summer, open out to a cantilevered walkway that was designed to emphasize the property’ s soft pitch. Nestling the house within the declivity also helps provide shelter from strong winds and brings it closer to the cooling effects of the woods. The firm eliminated a basement from the design in light of the high water table, which also decreased the project’ s overall reliance on concrete.
Superkül ' s clients desired a tranquil home that blurs inside and outside, with an explicit preference for monochromatism, matte finishes, and natural materials. Not only did they design with the land, they also found imaginative ways to bring nature and its rhythms into the interior experience. The principal bathroom looks out to an enclosed garden space— the open secret that sits at the heart of
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