A Bay-View Estate in the United States

Bellingham, WA

The architecture firm Stephenson Design Collective designed this estate in Bellingham, Washington, USA. The surrounding natural beauty was placed front and center, with the architects working to keep their intervention and impact on it to a minimum. The client wanted the house to inspire and evoke a particular set of emotions; the conversations with him never touched on square footage, only on how he envisioned living in this new place, sustainably and for the long term.

The main part of the residence is separated from a studio building, whose ground floor houses a garage and a metalworking shop, exactly as the homeowner, a blacksmith by trade, had wanted. The entrance to the main part of the estate, and its facade, reveal almost nothing of what lies within, or of the views the residents experience from inside. Natural steel and black cedar finishes were chosen to blend in with the landscape. On the street-facing side of the house, the windows are designed purely for light and a visual connection to the surroundings. On the bay-facing side, toward which the residence turns, floor-to-ceiling glazing dominates, inviting anyone standing there to become part of the vast beauty beyond.