Four summers ago, a group of a dozen or so people gathered for dinner in a forest in North Bend, Washington. Held on a site near Mount Si and Mount Teneriffe, about 30 miles southeast of Seattle, the event was a modern-day “topping-out” celebration (complete with an Ethan Stowell–cooked meal) for Joan and Ken Vaughn, whose house had recently received its final lumber board.

In addition to the couple and some of their friends, members of the project’s design team—which included Signal Architecture + Research, Dovetail General Contractors, and Ohashi Landscape Services—joined the festivities.

“It was peak summer,” says Joe Sadoski, an associate principal at Signal Architecture. “There were no windows, but we put up string lights and had this fun dinner party under the plywood and weather barrier. It was a chance for Joan and Ken to start picturing themselves in the space.”

For the homeowners, looking directly into the forest—in all directions—was exactly what they envisioned.

“We wanted a house in the middle of the woods that looked like you dropped it right in between all of the trees,” Joan says. “I wanted to feel like I’m outside in and inside out at all times.” Both Joan and Ken were born and raised in Washington (he on the eastern side of the state and she in Seattle), and after spending a decade in Salt Lake City, getting back to the Northwest was a priority for them.

Once the couple returned, they decided to move to North Bend, a quieter, more rural area that provided abundant opportunities for gardening, hiking, fishing, and kayaking. Although the house they found—a 3,600-square-foot, three-story builder-spec model—wasn’t their dream house, they quickly fell in love with area and their neighbors.

After living in the house for more than a decade, Joan and Ken started thinking about designing something custom—a living space tailored for their needs and interests, built in harmony with the environment around it. They searched extensively for property, and they eventually snatched up an acre and a half that went up for sale just a half-mile away from their home.

When it came time to talk about design firms, Joan already knew that she wanted to work with Signal Architecture. She had met Mark Johnson, a principal at the firm, through her work on the board at Encompass Northwest, a nonprofit offering early learning, pediatric therapy, and family enrichment programs. Signal Architecture had designed the organization’s childhood learning center, and Joan was impressed with his commitment to working closely with the land and focusing on preservation.

“The project evolved from the site,” Johnson says. “Joan had initially envisioned a linear building with bedrooms on either side and a public space in the middle. In response to the land, we started to break things into nodes anchored around a central gathering space.”

The parcel of land was densely populated with trees—a big draw for the homeowners—but it also had a scattering of giant nurse logs left over from the old-growth forest. Measuring in between five and eight feet in diameter, the logs were a beautiful bonus for the homeowners. “Joe and I spent a lot of time on the site mapping where those were,” Johnson says. “We reconfigured the house to fit in between them.”

The clients had three main requests: the house should be a single story, have cement floors, and have large walls of windows in as many places as possible. Additionally, Joan was hoping for a midcentury touch. “My parents had a very modern home, so I grew up with that architectural style,” she says. “Clean lines and open, spacious living have always appealed to me.”

In response to these prompts, Signal designed a 2,600-square-foot house divided into three connected volumes: a primary suite, an entertaining hub (with the kitchen, living room, and dining area), and a guest suite that holds Joan’s painting studio and a flexible-use space. To the north of the house sits a garage. At one end, the architects and builders built Joan a surprise potting area featuring a large workspace crafted from leftover cedar used on the interior ceilings.

In order to save as many trees as possible, Signal revised Joan’s original floor plan from a linear volume to an L-shaped block, and its exterior palette of dark-stained cedar siding and steel is designed to blend in with the surrounding woods. The disturbance of the existing forest was held to five feet from the house, and in some places the structure is cut into the site’s slight hill. Windows abound, many strategically placed to frame views of the trees and nurse stumps. During excavation, Dovetail uncovered more than 40 giant glacial boulders, a handful of which were worked into the landscape design.

“The house wants to sit in the landscape as a broken-up pavilion,” Sadoski says. “It’s designed around all the stumps and trees, but we worked to maintain these relics.”

“The way the views go through the property—whether you’re in a car or on foot coming in from a trail—was informed by the idea of prospect and refuge,” Johnson adds. “Everything is very gradual and flowing.”

Inside the house, a minimalist approach prevails. Cedar ceilings are a warm nod to the trees outside, while concrete flooring and a custom steel fireplace add slight industrial touches. In certain areas, like the living room and bathroom, the architects brought in the black-stained cedar siding to further the outside-in motif. When the weather is nice, a large concrete patio (and smaller seating area with a firepit a few steps away) provides a place for outdoor dining: All the couple has to do is slide open the large wall of windows opposite the kitchen and roll out their wheeled table.

When the seasons turn and the Pacific Northwest’s signature rains reappear, Ken and Joan enjoy a custom-designed water-catching system on the roof that creates waterfalls that splash onto the large boulders unearthed during construction. “Joe developed this waterfall gutter system that works with capillary action,” Johnson explains.

The idea is that as the water splashes on the rocks, it will eventually produce moss, continuing the forest’s life cycle and allowing plants to continue to grow. It’s a microcosm of Ken and Joan’s entire approach to building their house, which is a love letter to the environment around them. “They wanted to create this building that’s of today and tomorrow,” says Johnson, “and at the same time serves as a legacy to the forest.”

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Project Credits:

Architect: Signal Architecture + Research / @signal_arch

Builder: Dovetail General Contractors

Structural Engineer: Smith Lubke

Civil Engineer: Eastside Consultants

Landscape Design Company: Ohashi Landscape Services

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