A House Not Built for Human Beings

The 14-foot-tall redwood fragment dwarfs visitors to architect Allan Shope’s living room, though its sheer size betrays a different kind of immensity: over 2,000 years of fine growth rings, a humbling reminder of nature’s passage of time. The lesson of the ancient redwood—a pillar of its ecosystem for centuries, quickly felled by humans with little understanding of their actions—is an integral part of Shope’s new home, built with reclaimed materials and filled with wood furnishings made by his own hand.