Lake Sunapee House, Sunapee, NH

This house was designed to combine home and work for a pair of empty-nesters, both artists. Comprised of four buildings, the house is a compound recalling a Nineteenth Century summer camp, its distinctly shaped outdoor rooms creating a village-like intimacy. A separate studio provides a sense of privacy and independence, while the connected guesthouse with its upstairs bedroom over the entry arcade works well for visiting children. The articulated plan also functions ecologically, enabling a large building program to fit gracefully on a complex sloping site on the shore of a New Hampshire lake with minimum impact on the topography. The kitchen, dining room, and living room are unified by a heavy timber frame of recycled fir. Sweeping roofs with deep overhangs and granite foundation walls that become garden retaining walls express the idea of connection between the built and the natural environment.

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