At the end of a meandering driveway that rises over a tree-dotted hill, a small, faceted structure comes suddenly into view, edged against a brown horse fence. Below it, cradled in an expanse of green, is a sparkling lake. “We like to reveal things gradually, to allow the views and the experience to develop,” says architect Tal Schori, who is visiting the site, located in New York’s Dutchess County, with a guest on a September day.

The structure belongs to his parents, Yanki Schori and Yael Meridan Schori, who commissioned Tal and GRT Architects, the firm he founded with his childhood friend Rustam-Marc Mehta, to design a small studio as a way for the Manhattan-based couple to test the waters of weekend country living. Lately, it’s been their primary residence.

The house consists of three brick-clad boxes with pitched roofs and beak-shaped clerestories, arranged in a pinwheel plan, each rotated 120 degrees from the next. These shifts in geometry, as well as in grade, open and transform the 800-square-foot space in myriad ways, inside and out.

As Tal leads the way around the exterior, its forms appear to change, alternating between linear and jewel-like, single- and multivolume. The fired black brick cladding and the canted roofs channel both the landscape and the local rural vernacular, but copy neither. The surface appearance changes too, depending on the light—sometimes shimmering and textured, other times flat and matte.

Inside, the essentially one-room space feels surprisingly large, light-filled, and flexible, a quality that has helped the couple create their new lifestyle on the fly. “I don’t think they knew exactly how they would use it at first,” says Tal.

Varied surfaces and level shifts differentiate how areas are used, some of them serving multiple functions. (Tal calls it “complex without complication.”) The central living space includes two terrazzo-clad counters; one serves as a kitchen island, the other as a place for Yael, an artist, to paint.

“I don’t paint landscapes when I’m here because I can’t compete with the natural beauty.”
—Yael Meridan Schori, resident

The couple’s sleeping area (they use a pullout couch) is sunken just beyond Yael’s workspace, its lower elevation, and the length of the counter above (which acts as a wardrobe on the sleeping side), providing some privacy. A Murphy bed next to the entrance pulls down for guests, while a timber table provides dining space and a work area for Yanki, a financial advisor. Textured white oak cabinets hide several utilities, including the boiler and a water filtration system.

A painting by Yael hangs near the Murphy bed in the makeshift guest sleeping quarters.

Ceilings covered in tongue-and-groove planks of smooth white oak draw the eye up and outward, while light from the angled clerestories shifts in intensity and shape throughout the day. Windows are strategically placed to frame the gorgeous views of the countryside. The scene from the couple’s bed, for instance, is of the lake, foregrounded by a narrow lap pool and a small grove of trees.

“It’s like a perfect painting,” says Yael of the view of the lake from another window in the kitchen. “It’s always a surprise. Every morning, we wake up and the water looks different.”

Indeed, more than anything, the space has let the outdoors take precedence in the couple’s lives. The 24-acre site, which they discovered after about a year of searching, unfolds and changes like the house—lush and manicured in some areas and craggy and mysterious in others.

Tal and GRT are now building a larger, 1,500- to 2,000-square-foot home just a short jaunt up the property, allowing Yanki and Yael to have more breathing room as well as more guests, including Tal’s growing family. (A separate painting studio for Yael is about to be finished, well ahead of the house.) But that development is still some time off, and for now the couple is happy occupying the smaller house.

“We’ve learned that we don’t need a lot of space,” says Yael, who loves the home’s dual sense of openness and privacy, intimacy and expansiveness. “It’s become clear how wonderful it is to live here.”

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: GRT Architects

Engineering: Edward Stanley Engineers

Landscaping: Steven Yavanian Landscape Architecture

Cabinetry: Simon Hamui

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A Pinwheel-Shaped Cottage in Upstate New York Packs a Lot of Living Space Into a Single Room