Cool Houses

Since the front door is located in the exterior wall, residents first enter a vast garden before reaching the gable roof house.

“People scold us if we don’t raise the kite,” says Holm (sitting with Kiehl,). From the bench outside, the couple can wave to friends passing in boats and make use of the long summer evenings.

Setsumasa and Hideaki toss on the rain fly. The solar panel in the foreground supplies daytime electricity.

Suspended shelves made of wood planks display organic ingredients. Photo by Wouter van der Sar.

When you stay in Manshausen, you’ll be suprised to find a hot tub and dam that you can enjoy at your leisure. It holds up to 14 people and leads down to a dam that holds salt water that’s pumped into the contained area to keep it fresh.

The great room in the 2,800-square-foot house that architect Drew Lang designed for his family in the Hudson Woods development north of New York City features generous amounts of white oak, which he says is his favorite material.

All of the wood in the house—including the oak flooring, paneling, cabinetry and stairs—comes from companies run by the Hickman company in Pennsylvania. "They have a compelling story that we were very drawn to and embraced," Lang says. "They're a fourth-generation family-owned business, and they own and manage their own FSC-certified forest. They process their own wood, mill it into flooring, and sell directly."

White oak takes center stage inside the main entrance. "Our inclination from the get-go was to have a lot of wood inside the house—not just on the floors, but other surfaces," Lang says. "So as we designed, it became a matter of balancing our spaces in terms of the materials we implemented, recognizing that we weren't going to put wood everywhere. That entry space happens to be an exception where the wood is just everywhere. It is the only space in the house where wood is on the floors, the walls, the ceilings, the stairs, everywhere. Not only that, but it happens to be 16 feet high—even higher than that if you consider the opening in the stairwell—so it ended up being a really dramatic space that we're pleased with and that people are drawn to."

A yellow Pedestal filing cabinet by USM is tucked under a built-in desk in the guest bedroom. The leather-back chair was designed by Michael Robbins, a furniture designer based in New York's Hudson Valley.

The master bathroom features a cedar screen and quartzite tiles by Walker Zanger.

White oak makes a return appearance on the ceiling in the master bedroom.

The cooking area features two islands—one more permanent than the other. A concrete island contains various appliances. With the extra surface area, there’s plenty of room to roll out dough and a wide berth for Ian’s power chair.

A massive slab of cypress perched atop sawhorses provides storage for pots and utensils.