The Open House

The Open House is part of "Ways Of Life". It aims to connect people to nature, individually and collectively through using elemental forms and the elements of earth, wind, and water. Everyone is invited to inhabit this shelter to work and to live in. It is a space of slow and fundamental life.

One dives into the building through an exterior staircase, as one would enter into the silence of a forest. In the lower level, individual experiences —the smell of earth, the light of the sun, and the dripping of the rain — enter the vertical shafts.

The ground level is an open room without walls. This collective space offers protection, shade and a refreshing breeze during hot summers for communication and playing. It is an architecture defined through contrasting elements.

The upper floor provides room to work, to talk, and to think. The space is for everyone—the painter, the writer, the craftsman, the priest, and the family. From here, only the relationships to the surrounding natural landscape matter—the reflection of the lake, the rustling of the trees and the smell of meadow.

The rooftop pond collects rainwater for a natural habitat of diverse plants that grow around and inside the house over time.

From being rooted within the earth, to an architecture without walls, to reaching within and above the tree canopy, the house oscillates between being introspective and externally facing. It is an open house — to people, elements, and the natural landscape.