Inside a Woodland Home Built Over Water to Become One With Nature

Architectural Digest

Today, AD travels to the woodlands of Oregon to tour the breathtaking Newberg Residence, a remarkable home designed to exist in harmony with the nature surrounding it. Perched over an old logging pond, this one-of-a-kind home is the work of Jim Cutler of Cutler Anderson Architects, who envisioned a structure not imposed on the land, but integrated with it. Built like a bridge over water, the residence is a testament to Cutler’s philosophy: to never harm natural life through his work, but instead to foster and encourage it. In the decade since its construction, the surrounding landscape has flourished, with wildlife, water, and woodland thriving around the home.

Transcript

00:00My favorite architectural scene in all movies is when Dorothy opens the door and outside the door

00:15it's color from black and white and that quite possibly is the first time most people had ever

00:23seen color film in their life the right sort of build up to something really beautiful I call it

00:35choreography the best way to experience architecture is by moving through it and

00:41scanning and looking around and so if you realize that then you can make the architecture amplify

00:49the place I'm Jim Cutler principal designer at Cutler Anderson Architects and I designed this place about 10 years ago

01:09I got a call like we always do from potential clients and they had already chosen a piece of

01:15land it was a hilltop and it was really beautiful spot but I needed to remind them that it's very easy

01:24to bring cars into places but it's really hard to get them out we were coming down from that hilltop and

01:30I noticed a visual clearing in the woods and I said what's that over there they said oh it's an old

01:36logging pond you know it's all filled in and I walked around there's this wonderful tree stump outside here

01:42and I said you know if I was going to design something for you I'd design something here and

01:47I would integrate the building in the pond as one thing and they asked me why and I explained to them at that

01:55point in my career and I had become very versed to killing anything any living thing I mean the world is just

02:02so beautiful and everything has the same right to be here whether it's inanimate or a plant or a

02:10a creature for many years I felt that fostering life creating habitat is a high calling in life

02:20you know water fosters life and I could somehow integrate a pond in a building if we build it

02:26they will come put it that way and uh one time I was out here with Michael one half of the owners

02:34and he's very in touch with the living world so we were sitting out here in the evening he said you know

02:39in about 10 minutes uh the flickers are going to come by and they're going to start eating the

02:44insects off the pond 10 minutes the flickers come by and then the swallows are going to come by

02:51the swallows come in it's getting a little dark I think the bats are going to come in bats come in

02:57this place had connected him to the rhythms of life that water fosters

03:06power of architecture is emotional when you choose a place that you're going to dwell in

03:13and then there's an obligation to know that place well because there's life

03:28we're coming up the walk to the house and we deliberately parked guests far away and we designed

03:37it in a way to make it actually quite narrow and you can see that you sense the clearing just by the

03:44amount of sky you can see beyond these trees but to reinforce what happens when you walk in the front

03:50door that you open up to the pond we even tighten the path up further and then as you come on the house

03:58you know there's something special on the other side of that door and we wanted to give some

04:03implication you were going to get there but the door then acts as the foil

04:19i'm squeezing you because the tighter it is the bigger big feels the lighter it is the darker dark

04:27is by contrast they amplify one another but i don't want to be like boom you know

04:33to surprise you when you walk in the door so i wanted to bring a little bit of the pond on that

04:37side and i wanted you to see over the roof so you could sense the clearing on this side

04:43and create a level of anticipation of arriving somewhere

04:53these are steel beams holding this up the reason the steel beams is we thought we'd have a lot of hue

04:59if i had to do this in wood it would have been much thicker and deeper and we would have blocked

05:04view so then you have to start using materials within their nature once you get going on a design

05:11and if you're lucky and if you're listening it tells you what it wants it's this sort of

05:19cacophony of different voices for me the steel wants to show what it can do the wood wants to show what

05:25it can do you know the forest wants to show its history and its nature the water wants to show

05:30how it fosters life how do you take all that cacophony of voices and you turn it into a harmony

05:37that's my job the owners wanted the stronger connection of the pond as possible

05:55so when we designed this i i had a lot of fun

06:03kind of see this right here it's about a 400 pound piece of lead and there's one on either side

06:12it counterweight this door let's see if it'll open

06:23now that's an 800 pound door and that wasn't so hard to lift because now you can see the leads

06:32all the way down here and that is a heavy piece of lead and so we have three of them one at the

06:39kitchen one at the living room and one in the bedroom so that when you're in the building you

06:45don't necessarily need to be in the building you can be in the pond oh another frog nope two frogs

06:54look at them you got to have a place to dive off you don't want to splash water back on the oak floor

07:01and yeah you know it just seemed like such a poetic spot to sit in the eagle

07:06you can take it all in all the sounds all the animals everything and to some degree you can take

07:14in the silence

07:22it's a nice kitchen we'd wanted to have a window there and it was also the best possible place for

07:27the range it was a fun thing to design and it works shocking well the fireplace is the lateral stability

07:42we're we're in a sizable earthquake zone and if you do a roof like this where you can see all the way

07:49from one end to the other that's a lot of load up high so that if an earthquake wants to move the building

07:56sideways well it's going to do it and the only way to restrain that lateral movement is with some degree

08:04of mass or a structural stability in this axis so the fireplace is a structural element and it's

08:12the uh for me a statement about the lateral forces that are endemic to this region

08:31i'd say 95 percent of the building was from this region you know and it's reflective of this region

08:38you know glue and beams were invented here vertical grain for uh plywood was invented here and comes

08:47here because it's the only place douglas fur grows and it's light so it's well suited for structure

08:54cedar which the outside of the building is made of red cedar which is from here it's highly aerated

09:00it's a very light physically light wood and it's extremely rot resistant so we're using it within its

09:07nature we're using the douglas fur within its nature so you'll notice there are little bits of concrete

09:12out on the corners here they all line up so when you look at the side plane of this it looks like an

09:18ancient giant swimming pool that has been partly let's say subsumed by detritus and uh and sediments

09:29but still there's a vestige of that swing i look back on it now that's a little bit of a frou-frou

09:35metaphor but i wanted to create a sense of time and by leaving objects in the landscape it pushes the

09:46time reference for the project

09:48the bedroom is pretty much all the same in the sense one thing i would say is it is glass between

10:06the living room better because we wanted the roof which is the sheltering of it to be one continuous

10:12plane it would be a parrot to make this feel more like a pavilion and when you think of pavilion you think

10:18of an outdoor area under a roof my god that cat has a regal pose i see

10:27i like the needle he's a good one

10:37and you have to walk outside to get the guest house and i'll tell you i built a little cabin for my

10:44daughter and myself she actually helped build it when she was 11. that's a wonderful thing and it's

10:49only about 35 feet from the front door of our house and there is not one night that goes by when

10:55i'm running back and forth and look out at the water or listen to the wind in the trees or look at the

11:01moon or what planets are coming by and i had no hesitation in making that separation where you got to

11:07walk outside to get to another room of the house when you go from this one to that one you experience

11:14the outside you hear the water you see the water and if it's windy you hear the trees if it's snowing or

11:20raining you hear the water coming down in the pond why not experience the place fully i mean it's really a joy

11:26i talked about architecture being shelter we could take that and say it's clothing right keeps you warm

11:38and dry so if you're clothing the institution of family you better know it's anatomy i mean you're

11:44wearing a sweatshirt right now and might be from the gap for all i know but one size kind of fits all

11:49it's got sleeves and a hole for your head and you know piece to cover your trunk but in a way that's

11:56that's no different than this house or the institution of family that you're going to

12:01clothe because families have very specific qualities there are public zones like the room we're in and

12:10there are private zones like the bedrooms and there are decision points like entries where you get to

12:18make a decision whether you want to participate on something in the public or you want to go to your

12:23private zone and they don't want to mix they want to have as much separation as possible and in small

12:30houses that's tricky but that's the anatomy you're trying to clothe the only difference between me and

12:36the gap is you can think of me more as a civil role you know tailor i tailor things

12:43when you bring someone to an emotional understanding of things of something that's beautiful they learn

12:58to love it and teaching people to love the living world is actually i think the highest quality that

13:05any human being could have because we're killing this place i want to describe a method of working

13:15that is different than the mainstream and i'm hoping that i get a few lucky souls that get it and move in

13:23in that direction

13:53you

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