benjamin benschneider photo
clearly one ‘sweet spot’ that the home
wanted to be placed in. It features a native
rock outcropping free of trees and is
surrounded by mature fir and madrone
trees.
Our design solution ‘wraps’ the home
around the rock outcropping, using it
as the central foreground feature that
anchors the whole experience. The floor
level was carefully considered to tuck
the house into the outcropping, rather
than sit on top of it.
But one of the most interesting
things is how sensitively the house
exists within the surroundings — especially
within the madrone trees. These
beautiful tress are notoriously sensitive
to disturbance and infections, and we
managed to wrap a house around them
without doing harm. This required quite
an effort by the contractor.
Not only did we paint over any cuts
in the root system to keep fungus from
getting in, we maintained strict site
protocols among the contractors. These
protocols included no walking or driving
over the root system, as too much traffic
can cause the trees to die.
Was there anything uniquely challenging
about working on an island?
Working in the San Juans is a lot like
working in Vail, Aspen or Ketchum.
People want to live there, so it’s one
of those places that attracts talent.
The result is the level of skill and craft
found in the islands is exceptional. The
challenge was more how well we could
utilize these incredible tools, rather
than how do we deal with any perceived
limitations.
I would say on this project, the one
challenge we had was concrete. Our client
loves concrete and had a high level
of expectation. The house was built by
Ravenhill out of Friday Harbor. At one
point their subcontractor pouring the
walls wasn’t performing and was eventually
fired. Ravenhill ripped out some
of the walls and took over the remaining
scope themselves — doing a great job in
the process.
The ultimate lesson was that it’s best
to minimize architectural concrete in
the islands. We’re not sad about that.
It’s better environmentally to minimize
concrete use.
benjamin benschneider photo
kenmoreair.com
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