When Andrew Zuckerman and Niki Bergen decided to build a large guesthouse behind their home in upstate New York, they didn’t ask their designers for two bedrooms, two baths, or any of the other usual requirements. “We led with a narrative rather than a program,” says Andrew. He and Niki started sharing ideas and stories about what their lives could look like.

“We showed them a picture of this old Japanese couple, like in their 80s, soaking at an onsen,” Andrew says, describing one of many reference images. “I showed them pictures of Pompeii and I said, ‘I want you to design this place backward, from it as a ruin. What is this building five hundred years from now? When everyone’s gone and the glass is blown out? What’s left? Let’s look at that.’ ”

The designers, David Leven and Stella Betts of New York City studio Levenbetts, were more than game. Longtime friends of the homeowners, Leven and Betts had designed their primary house on the site back in 2007—their first residential commission—and they were happy to have such an open-ended follow-up. “I don’t think any of us had an idea of how the house was going to look, function, or be organized,” says Leven.

Several years of dialogue led to a quietly monolithic structure: a 43-foot-square concrete box set in a contemplative landscape of rocks and moss just up a gentle slope from the main house. Every detail of the meticulously crafted cedar formwork shows on the ghostly gray concrete. Other than that, the most striking feature on the exterior is a glass wall set into a distinctive angular cutout that follows the lines of an outdoor stair leading to a rooftop vegetable garden. Andrew affectionately describes the overall aesthetic as “bunker chic.”

The free-form design process points to clients who are creatives in their own right. Known for his poetic, hyper-realistic images, Andrew is a photographer and filmmaker who has exhibited widely and published many books. Niki, who formerly worked on design and product development at textile brand Chilewich, now directs Superflower, a collaborative project that uses Andrew’s deeply detailed images of flowers to create wallpaper inspired by Edo period ikebana and 19th-century Victorian patterns.

View a home tour video created by Andrew below:

The couple’s three children range in age from 7 to 13, and when they had their youngest, they knew they needed more space. At the same time that they built the guesthouse to give their frequent visitors more privacy, they also added a garage with kids’ rooms above it attached by a bridge to the main house.

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Although the guesthouse reads as a single story, the floor level rises and lowers with the site’s topography. The design intentionally alters your perspective as you progress through the house. In the already stepped-down living area, more steps lead into a wide conversation pit framed by a sectional that the clients and architects co-designed. (Niki reports that the deep, comfortable seating has fit at least 10 kids sleeping over.) “When you’re in the sunken living room, you’re lower than the ground plane and you see nature at a very different scale,” says Betts of the view out to the garden and the woods.

The connection between the interior and the landscape runs throughout the house. Every room has full-height glass windows or walls, and doors on all four facades ease access to the outside. “It’s an idea of porosity, of being out in nature and then entering every room in the house from wherever,” says Betts. Not to mention it’s also a green strategy that produces natural cross ventilation, while the concrete construction acts as a thermal mass.

Kyoto-based landscape architect Marc Peter Keane blended Eastern design principles with Western aesthetics to create graceful but stunning views. Something of a signature move for Keane is the meandering “dry river” composed of stones that runs down the hillside and alongside the house. Here, he accentuated it by flanking it with mounds planted with native and Japanese greenery.

The process may have involved years of discussion—and all those many, many reference photos—but it ultimately produced a home that is a meditation on simplicity. The guesthouse became a perfect refuge when the pandemic began, and Andrew set up a home studio in one of the bedrooms. “I joked that it really did become a bunker,” he says, although one that’s more sanctuary than fortress.

Project Credits:

Architecture: Levenbetts Architects / @levenbetts

General Contracting: Eric Glasser & Company

Structural Engineering: Silman Structural Engineers

Landscape Design: Marc Peter Keane / @marcpeterkeane

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A Concrete Guesthouse in Upstate New York Is Decidedly “Bunker Chic”