A New York City couple had been going up to the Hudson Valley for several years when they finally decided to build a weekend retreat there. The prospect of maintaining a piece of land in the country had always deterred them—having to plow snow or perform other upkeep in the face of bad weather. On one trip up, however, they looked at a four-and-a-half acre site in Claverack, a few miles outside the city of Hudson, and envisioned themselves growing a garden and pursuing other hobbies they couldn’t back in New York. The parcel also had nice views of the valley with the Catskills in the distance.

After buying the land, the couple hired Maria Ibañez de Sendadiano and Todd Rouhe of IDSR Architecture to design a home. They liked that the firm focused on energy-efficient design, which it’s been experimenting with for more than a decade now; Ibañez de Sendadiano and Rouhe, a couple themselves, created a small weekend house for their own family in Mount Tremper in 2009.

In Claverack, the architects created Orchard House, a shedlike 1,850-square-foot retreat that fits in easily with the Hudson Valley’s barn vernacular, with corrugated sheet metal cladding and a concrete foundation. The foundation, embedded with pipes for heating and cooling, has a polished surface to double as the house’s mottled gray floor. The single-level plan is divided by a hall that becomes a breezeway when the front and back doors are open; to one side are the living spaces and the primary bed and bath, and on the other is a guest room with a bath of its own.

The building achieves energy efficiency on par with Passive House standards, say Ibañez de Sendadiano and Rouhe. They used closed-cell spray-in foam for the insulation, which is highly efficient, while a heat pump operates the floor’s heating and cooling elements. The breezeway and operable windows and sliding glass doors provide ample airflow as desired, but when the clients want to keep windows shut, a heat-recovery ventilator can cycle in fresh air.

“Most of the architects of our generation were made aware of ecological concerns when we were brought up in school,” says Rouhe, in part explaining why he and Ibañez de Sendadiano emphasize energy efficiency in their designs. (He’s a graduate of Southern California Institute of Architecture and Columbia University, and Ibañez de Sendadiano of Princeton.) “Still, there was a more formal agenda for the projects. Designing homes is more pragmatic in a way. It’s more utilitarian.”

As for the home’s furnishings, the clients wanted them to provide warmth to the industrial-feeling home; minimal custom wooden bookshelves in the open living-and-dining room are by Ibañez de Sendadiano and Rouhe, but otherwise, a selection of 21st-century furniture and fixtures are entirely the clients’ ideas. “They only wanted things that were designed after the year 2000,” says Rouhe.

$26,335 Site Work	$108,298 Foundation	$17,825 Structural Steel
$149,490 Structural Wood	$30,000 Insulation	$93,171 Wall Finishes
$114,479 Metal Siding/Roofing	$6,362 Hardware	$48,825 Electrical
$27,710 Plumbing	$80,011 HVAC	$18,615 Kitchen & Bath Fixtures
$18,672 Lighting	$36,694 Cabinetry (including counters)	$16,859 Appliances
$117,280 Windows & Glazing	$27,880 Doors	$11,200 Millwork
$21,000 Tilework	$480 Permitting	$21,982 GC Project Management Fee
$90,000 Architect Fee	$18,000 Waste/Debris Removal
Grand Total: $1,101,168

Editor’s Note: Labor costs included in trade prices.

Ibañez de Sendadiano and Rouhe designed the home in 2019 and, fortunately for the owners, it was bid out in 2020 before labor and material prices began to skyrocket during the pandemic. The contractor honored much of the original agreement as prices rose and cut into profits, but the architects still had to perform some “value engineering” of materials to limit increases in costs. At a total price of roughly $1.1 million, including labor and materials, the project was more than the clients originally wanted to spend.

“The builders told us this house is now worth twice what it was built for, but the clients don’t care, because this is their place,” Rouhe says. “They didn’t buy it because they were going to sell it. They’re going to keep it, and they’re going to continue building here, adding agricultural structures and other garages for their interests.”

More from IDSR Architecture:

A House in the Catskills Hovers Over the Landscape

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: IDSR Architecture

Contractor: CB Design / Build

Structural Engineer: Ross Dalland