Trinity Townhouse

CLIENT

LOCATION

OVERVIEW

This project began with a single question: what does a space for making look like when it is also a space for living? Our client needed a studio that could provide a place for focused work, accommodate guests with grace, and hold its own against a landscape of open fields and sweeping views across the Hudson River to the Catskill Mountains. The building is organized as two perpendicular volumes in dark-stained wood with gabled roofs, rooted in the vernacular of the surrounding farmland. The volumes are joined by a gallery space that serves as lounge, dining room, or gallery depending on the day, a link that elevates the idea of connection. One volume holds the double-height studio and a three-sided mezzanine office above; the other, the kitchen and loft-level bedroom. A stair in each volume allows the entire sequence to be walked through without doubling back, continuous and unhierarchical.

The polished concrete floor, a quiet nod to Carlo Scarpa, transforms the space with the seasons. By day it catches light through the picture windows and carries it across the room; at night it recedes and the walls seem to float above it. The effect was unexpected, and welcome. Picture windows frame the fields and the distant ridgeline with precision, not as ornament, but as the primary source of light and the measure of time passing.

The studio was designed to be used, marked, and changed by the work that happens within it.

Featured in Ark Journal Vol. XV.

Program Elements: Studio Addition | Stair | Bedroom | Bathroom | Mezzanine Office

Photography by William Jess Laird