Cambridge-based design practice WOJR has designed House of the Woodland, a pyramidal house grounded in framing and symmetry. Designed around rituals of respite, the project utilizes a nine-square grid structuring four plywood trusses resting atop eight cinder block walls. Sited in the Berkshires, the design makes its grid organization visible through the roof's large-scale coffers. The project explores a series of dichotomies through materials, space and form.
As WOJR states, "Parallel to the aspiration that the completed building fosters a slowness and an awareness of temporality, so too does the building-in-process." Envisioned for a 25 acre rural site, the project is a one-and-a-half-story dwelling at 2,300 square feet.
The design was inspired by three woodland moments: inscribing of a space in the woods; a space which emerges after the concrete floor is in place and the eight walls bracket establish a ring, the covering of an exterior space by way of the construction of the pyramidal roof atop the four trusses, and filling the open-air pavilion with interior walls, adding glazing and other elements that make a building a home. The design features a steep pitched roof with a series of skylights that pierce the pyramidal roof form.
House of the Woodland was a recipient of a 2019 Progressive Architecture Award Honorable Mention.
