Ridgeview House

The Ridgeview House was designed for an artist and family practitioner couple. The site, an L-shaped hillside lot just minutes outside of downtown Boise, ID, has great views of the city and of the Boise Foothills. The homeowners came to us with a clean slate, ready for anything that would fit the lot and take advantage of the views. Rather than designing a home with 270 degree panoramic windows that look at everything at once, we designed a home that frames specific moments from their hilltop views like pieces of art. Upon entering the home, we wanted the owners to see, not the city, but the calm of the foothills, and the result is awe inspiring. I could sit in that living room watching the distant figures walking along the ridge trails all day. It's mesmerizing. We framed a long horizontal view of the city above the kitchen sink that captures the skyline like a photograph. Due to the hot summers and cold winters of Boise, we designed two separate outdoor areas both off the main living space: a covered shade patio for summer and a south facing "sun" deck for winter. A central "art pod" serves dually as the vertical circulation to the walk out basement garage and as a the backdrop for the owner's artworks.
The homeowners were especially involved in the project, even being part of the installation of rolled steel siding, which is aging beautifully. The homeowners were absolutely committed to having a solar array on the butterfly roof, which offsets all their electrical costs, and to an extremely tight seal achieving an ACH of 1.2. At just over 2,000 square feet, this home is a paradigm of quality over quantity.
The builder was Schneider Custom Homes and was the perfect open-minded partner we needed on this project.