Nearpoint Residence, Architecture in the Tranquil Alaskan Landscape

Nearpoint Residence by Workshop Architecture and Design

SITE

A small knoll at the base of Alaska’s Chugach Mountains. The site is forested with birch and spruce trees offers commanding northern views of downtown Anchorage and the Alaska Range beyond.

DESIGN

The design was informed by tree primary considerations:

• Formation of strong visual and spatial ties to landscape and daylight.
• Relationship between use and thermal performance.
• Environmental sensitivity, compactness and energy efficiency.

Use groups are configured to optimize program specificity, landscape interaction and energy performance.

Operability mediates privacy, activity, sunlight, daylight and thermal performance.

DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE

Stretched long the house creates a sequential and spatial response to the changing landscape character of the ridge. Beginning with the very near, ground -related forest understory, the spatial scale of the house expands to exchange the distant panorama. The relationship then returns to the intimate adjacent landscape.

Ground intervention is minimized by cantilevering the main floor over a small basement footprint.

Use groups are defined based on thermal performance, social function and desired landscape and environment relationships.

• Collective spaces + stable long term inhabitation + big landscape.
• Individual spaces+ intermittent inhabitation+ near landscape.
• Private spaces+ intermittent nighttime inhabitation+ limited landscape.

This strategy drives spatial and resultant formal configuration of the house and enables high performance and environmental control.

Operability mediates issues of privacy, temperature, activity, sunlight, daylight and climate at use group, building and environment interface.

Specificity of exterior envelope, aperture and mechanical systems optimize interior environmental conditions.

Materials selected for performance. A standing seam-metal exterior cladding wraps the building’s exterior walls and roof. Fireproof and durable, it provides a protective shell for the house. Within this shell, softer woods of fir and cedar, like am fleece pullover, wrap the surfaces of human contact. Finished in either white or ebony semi-transparent stains, these soft woods seek to be both abstract and materially expressive.