25 Hillside Ave

The story of building a house for my parents begins with them in a place where many parents eventually find themselves. Living in the home where they raised their kids, wanting to downsize, reduce expenses, and retire with a balance of comfort and economy. My dad wanted to move somewhere rural for the scenery and low property taxes. My mom wanted to be around some culture and to be within walking distance of a grocery store. They landed on the Berkshires and started house hunting. Initially, they were looking to buy an old country house and do a small renovation to bring it up to modern standards. As a young ambitious architect and general contractor just a few years out of the Yale School of Architecture, I implored them to reconsider. "For the money you will spend to buy and then renovate an old house, I could build you something far better from the ground up." It took a little convincing but soon they were looking for land in the Berkshires instead of a house and ended up buying a little 1/2 acre lot off market within walking distance from downtown Great Barrington. I got to work.

The house is a very simple design, a courtyard scheme all on one floor with ceiling heights varied to define the interior living spaces. Its a post and beam structure which is the local structural system of choice for barns as it can achieve wide unbroken floor plans cheaply. A single story building with no basement, no attic and no stairs, it is an extremely efficient envelope around a single radiant heated slab on grade. The windows are ultra efficient tilt/turn windows which we purchased from Poland and we ultimately achieved Passive House levels of efficiency. The total hard costs were $625,000.and with a roof full of solar panels, it is completely free to live in. Last summer they ended up producing so much excess electricity they recently got an electric car and are still selling back to the grid.

They moved in only months before Covid 19 erupted and I could not be more happy to know they have a comfortable home to weather this storm.