An Architects Own Home Designed as a Tree House That Disappears Into the Landscape (House Tour)

The feeling of this house came from Greg and Lisa. They wanted a house that just felt like it was woven into this landscape. From inside to outside, outside to inside. I'm Greg Faulkner, client and co-architect. I'm Tom Kundig, co-architect. And this is Analog. Well, we're in Truckee, California. In the summer, it's a very desert climate. But gets about 400 inches of snow a year. And we're about 10 miles just over the summit from Lake Tahoe. The site was just magnificent. So the first thought was how to save all the trees and still build a house here. When we started to build this house, Lisa and I were talking about what direction we would take. And she named a few architects and one was Tom. And it was kind of an immediate thing where I had this sort of kindred thing with Tom. And I'm not sure what it was, but a lot of the things that I know and hold dear, he feels the same way about. And so it was a great sort of collaboration in that sense. The scheme of the house is really intended to be quiet to this landscape. And what we mean by quiet to the landscape is it just weaves into that landscape. The landscape becomes part of the house. So it really was telling us how to shape these indoor rooms with the outdoor rooms, saving the trees. And it was a perfect kind of symphony. And, you know, kind of following on to the previous question, the reason it was no brief, it was really sort of just a vehicle or an excuse to have fun. Maybe that's the best way to describe it. It wasn't a brief, it wasn't written. It was a conversation between architects and colleagues and clients. Lisa certainly has done projects in her background. And it was an immediate understanding of what the agenda was for the building. From the street, the house reads as a low one-story form that kind of repeats the behavior of the site. And then a tower of weathering steel rises from that vertically. Upon entry, you're immediately met with a very sculptural screen-like staircase that leads to a four-story tower where the secondary bedrooms and a rooftop deck live. And if you keep moving, that's the kitchen and the utility areas of the house. If you move to the right, you'll move through the kitchen and to the dining room, which is all glass and opens up completely to the landscape. And then we arrive at a concrete pavilion within the house, which is the living space. And then we move through that to get to the primary bedroom space and private study. The materials for the house are all singular choices throughout the house. So there's one stone, there's steel, concrete, glass, and one wood. It's wrapped in weathering steel. So as it weathers, it'll turn to the color of the needles on the forest floor. The materials used on this project are, again, materials familiar to Greg and I in our architecture. And we specifically see our buildings as not necessarily a moment in time, but a length in time, a long length in time. So you pick materials that actually get better with age. So if you're in a fantastic natural world like we are here, the more the sense of the hand, the sense of the craft is actually part of that experience. It's more the natural agenda of the entire project. Big things that move are exciting. And if you get to move them, they're even more exciting. And so when you can transform a space by sliding open a series of doors, and suddenly the space is not the same, you feel the breeze. I feel it right now. And you hear the birds, and you just sense the landscape, you know, changes it from this sort of glass box to something that's living and breathing and open. So we're actually pulling it apart and exposing all the interior passageways to the nature of this place, weaving the functions of a house into a forest. Well, in terms of the tactile kind of interactive pieces in the house, something that's a gizmo is an interior fireplace that has guillotine hatches that are operated by cranks. A faucet tap is manually operated. It's made out of bronze, and there's a big arm. And so you move it down and the water flows. And that's a quite fun one. As an architect, you work every day for clients, and it's a service industry, right? And so hiring Tom and being the client was really fun. I got to see the other side of the table. And now I have a really good experience with that, and I know what the clients are feeling when they sit across the table from me. Well, I also sometimes ask the question, well, what was it like working with another architect? Certainly at Greg's stature, I said, well, it was fantastic. Because in fact, we just shared the same agenda. It was a conversation. It was seamless. It was fun. And that is golden. Couldn't have been a better experience. I have to say, if my wife and I do a house, we're going to hire Greg. Well, I'll tell you what the coolest thing about the treehouse is, is houses can become potatoes. And so to establish a single story and then just a very careful vertical element and glaze it into the treetops so that it is like a treehouse, changes the house from a mass to an experience. I think the best part of this house is that you hardly see this house. This house sinks into the landscape. And what's really important for me is that this building is quiet to this landscape.