A Sustainable And Serene Residence By Cutler Anderson Architects | Open House TV

Welcome back. Now we're with renowned architect Jim Cutler. Though based in the Pacific Northwest, Jim has designed projects all over the world. One of his newest is this unique Connecticut residence. This home showcases his approach to design. It actually embraces the bucolic surroundings into its physical plan, making it not just in nature, but of nature. See for yourself. I'm Jim from Cutler Anderson Architects and welcome to Connecticut. Whenever we start a project we go out and we actually survey the land ourselves to physically engage with that property to get to know it well enough that we can see its best qualities. In the circumstance of this project we discovered that there was a bit of a low spot that is a little bit wet and that if we organize the building correctly we might be able to impound water. When we designed this, we thought, ah, guests are going to arrive here. Well, we'd like them to arrive at a place that looks very small so that when they open that front door, this is revealed to them. And by contrast, between this narrow space, the pond feels that much more open. When you look out at the exterior of the building, out the windows, is a siding that's rot-resistant. It's cypress. Different woods, because they have grown up in different ecosystems, have different capabilities. You don't want to torture a material by using it in the wrong place for the wrong use. After you've taken the pond in, you turn a little bit to your right and there's this very long hall. And the hallway is an invitation into a series of experiences, the first one being a small bridge, again literally crosses over the pond so you can experience it where it's on both sides of you, and then we bring you into the living room. Then if you come here for dinner, you sit at a dining table where it has the broad view of the meadow to the south, But to your north, there's a single picture window that looks back into the pond. The doors in the living room, we designed at five feet wide so that people could, in actually groups of two, freely move from inside to outside onto the terrace that then opens up into the broad meadow. A lot of our work people will say is emotionally green and consequently we try to have our buildings be technically green. In the case of this building where we did have a lot of glass we used the highest level of insulated glass that we could afford and secondarily we placed up on the roof almost 2,800 square feet of photovoltaic cells so that this building although spread out on an An energy use basis is actually net zero for a year. And we are dedicated to that in our office to try to keep away from fossil fuels and use every possible energy source which doesn't further exacerbate climate change. In the bedroom wing of the house, we have a master suite and two children's bedrooms. They're divided up in such a way that the parents, who will be here long after the kids grow up and move away, have the best view looking out over the meadow. But the children's rooms are also located and placed in such a way that they have beautiful views on one side into a forest and uphill meadow and the other into these gorgeous linden trees with curved branches, almost like looking into a sculpture. Thank you for coming and I hope that this project has helped you to see that there is a way to live on this planet and coexist with other living systems.