This legacy cabin is located on a large parcel of land at the end of a winding forest road in Oregon. Surrounded by thick strands Douglas Fir, and right near the coast, the structure is a classic pacific northwest cabin.

The homeowners are true Oregonians, with a woodshop on the property and a hankering to keep everything as true to the landscape as possible. Including the timber used in the frame.

David Shirley, AIA, the architect on the cabin explains, “the family has such a connection with the land. The homeowner is a burly woodsman, and he cut all of the trees for the home. You just know that when they look up and see all of those timbers every morning they can say, ‘These are our timbers, this is our house.’”

“We toured their existing home,” continues Shirley. “I love getting to visit houses people live in because it’s a good opportunity to say, ‘Hey, what do you love about how you live, what are your usage patterns, what’s your favorite thing about this house? What would you change, what don’t you like?’”

“What they said to us was, ‘We really like this house but its really old and needs to be replaced’. They liked a lot about their cabin, where it was, where it sat, and they said, ‘We are going to demo this thing, and we are going to save as much as we can of the existing house as far as the details go.’ I walked away thinking about their needs and wants and put together an initial design. After a few changes we started to move forward.”

The vision for the home was a hybrid timber frame, as heavy timber was an absolute must for the client. 

“Because 16’ was the max length of timber the homeowner could harvest, we designed everything in the cabin to that specification. And we only took the design of the house so far,” says Shirley. “The homeowner wanted to craft the details. So, we left space for him to put his stamp on the blank timber canvas.”

“I worked with these clients for better than 15 years. We worked on their main house and this latest project as a secondary building. They own a bunch of contingent lots, and they all have a great view,” explains architect Barry Price. Their intent was to make this a multigenerational compound, so the project was built for so the kids and grandkids could use the main house, and the client would still be nearby.”

Price continued, “So, they had the land, I knew the family, and I knew that what mattered to them was the view. Then it really came down to finding a spot. In this area, and every town defines it differently, but when you’re above 1,200 feet above sea level you have to go to the planning board to get approval on the site plan and the design in general. In terms of the site disturbance, controlling drainage, material colors, and to minimize how much of it pops out of the hillside; glass reflectivity, shielding lighting, all that stuff. I’ve been down that road dozens of times. Looking at it with all of that in mind, I knew I had to find a spot where I wouldn’t be clearing trees. I knew that I had to make a case that I was minimizing disturbance to the site.”

Because of extenuating factors, including the location and access, using a high-performance enclosure was the perfect remedy for these issues. The build site was a regal roost high up the side of a hillock in the Catskill Mountains, situated on a rocky slope, surrounded by sun, sky, and trees. It’s from this spot that the high efficiency cottage reaches out from its cantilevered perch toward a panorama of mountain summits.

“The barn is the first piece of a much bigger master plan, “says architect Mark Finlay. “It was built as a place that the homeowner could have privacy, it was to be a little get-away for her. She loved the idea of doing a sort of modern barn structure, and the whole master plan was designed so that she would get that.”

The client’s main house is located next door to their auxiliary barn build. They demoed an existing structure on the lot just adjacent to their home and then began to personalize the property in a large-scale way. Following the preparations of the lot, construction began in earnest on the client’s contemporary get-away barn.

“She really liked certain barns that I had designed with the structure expressed on the inside,” Finlay recalls. “New Energy Works was great. The hardest thing was getting the right color; the color was critical to the homeowner.”

Our team worked diligently at getting the hue provided by Finlay and his client translated to perfect timber tone for the project. Finlay continued, “There’s a double layer of timber on the roof and the color of the timbers is very specific, sort of a California, she wanted a kind of glazed wood with a softer look.”

This look is accomplished through the buttery timber finish that sits in comfortable contrast with subtle black steel embellishments on both the light fixtures and timber joinery. There is an abundance of natural light diffused throughout the space emanating from the dramatic floor-to-ceiling windows found in the living space and echoed in the centerpiece of the barn – the large glass enclosed porch.