Even clients with an aversion to therapy look forward to their sessions with Ryan Post. Rather than usher them into an airless office with unremarkable furniture and fluorescent lights, Ryan meets them in an airy, 470-square-foot cabin set in a field amid towering trees. Two armchairs face a comforting woodburning stove, and a wide mahogany bench allows for stretching out. Sometimes sessions take place outside, especially these days.

As a psychotherapist who spent much of his career treating teens in Colorado’s backcountry, Ryan believes deeply in the healing power of nature. When he relocated with his family to the 75-acre property in southeastern Rhode Island where his wife grew up, he saw an opportunity to forge a practice that merges 60-minute sessions with experiences that take advantage of the outdoors.

Ryan asked Jason Wood, principal and founder of design/build firm From [in] Form, to create a cabin about two hundred yards from the family’s home to serve as a rustic therapy office. Taking cues from Ryan’s nature-oriented approach, Wood designed a structure built of charred Douglas fir and topped with a corrugated Cor-Ten steel roof. The materials will develop a patina, blending further into the landscape.

The designer based the cabin’s angular form, which is high in the front and lower in back, on the freestanding lean-tos found on hiking trails. Its stance complements Ryan’s mission of providing a source of stability for clients. “The cabin looks to be leaning into the earth,” Wood says. “It’s an effort to make the visitor feel grounded.”

A crushed-granite path edged with joe-pye weed leads from a grassy parking area to the cabin. Early-comers might wander toward the forest, wait on the log holder cum bench, or sit on the puddingstone around back. Some ask to go outside after the session is over and jog on nearby trails. One client spent months building a wall out of vegetation on the property; another set her childhood Raggedy Ann doll ablaze in the fire pit outside the cabin. Ryan finds that clients often find it easier to open up outdoors.

“Some people need to walk outside before they can open up. Some grab sticks and beat trees. The land itself becomes the therapist.”
—Ryan Post, resident

Inside, kindling lines a wall behind the cast-iron stove. There’s a sleeping loft for family and friends, accessible by a mahogany ladder. The floor, a brilliant display of swirling electric-blue concrete, was initially a shock. “Jason wasn’t kidding when he said blue. It was way beyond what we imagined,” Ryan says. But he quickly embraced it. “At this point, if it weren’t there, it would be like, ‘Oh man, we really missed out,’” he says.

The views are as dynamic as the therapeutic techniques. Tall windows behind the stove frame moody winter clouds. Opposite, French doors above the bench face the sunrise on the summer solstice. The downward-angled window in front of Ryan’s desk looks out on a hay field, which grows slowly and then changes dramatically when harvested.

While the architecture magnifies the fleeting qualities of nature, it also provides a stable, versatile setting for the work at hand. “Therapy can be loud and messy, but you can’t break anything here,” Ryan says. “You can do whatever you have to do.”

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: From [in] Form / @frominform

Builders: Jason Wood, Rachel Stopka, Tristan Mead, Shou Jie Eng

Structural Engineering: Structures Workshop

Civil Engineering: Able Engineering

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