A Property Built With The Environment In Mind

You're watching Open House NYC. Now let's head upstate to view a home that was created as an environmentally sound and sustainable sanctuary from the city. It was built using materials that both reflect the light and the changing seasons around it, allowing it to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer. It's a property that's both bold and harmonious. Architect Matthew Grzywinski takes us on a tour. Hi, I'm Matthew Grzywinski, one of the co-founders of Grzywinski Ponds Architects. We're about 100 miles north of New York City at a home that a client commissioned us to design that's both formally innovative and ecologically sound. The orientation of the site and the geometry of the plan was predicated on maximizing daylight and minimizing passive solar heat gain, which pretty much means it never gets too hot in the summer or too cold in the winter. We clad the house in mill finish aluminum tiles, which has a high albedo rating. That's basically a fancy way of saying it reflects the sun well. In addition to aiding thermal performance, this luster gives the house a nice character that reflects the varying colors of the environment throughout the seasons. As soon as you enter, you're drawn into what we designed to be the heart of the home. Initially conceived as a pastoral respite from the city, we designed the home so it could ultimately evolve into the client's primary residence. We exposed the radiant concrete slab throughout the ground floor and interspersed little pockets of tile and hardwood to help delineate different zones within the common area. As with the rest of this project, we wanted this kitchen to be both beautiful and utilitarian. Whether we're eating, socializing, or cooking, it all ends up happening here. We wanted to keep the kitchen bright and timeless, so we chose a restrained palette of white and anthracite appliances. And we oriented the kitchen so it's always bright throughout the day, as the sun tracks from east to west. And the best part is, with the generous glazing at the corner, you can feel like you're cooking or dining al fresco throughout the year. The master suite occupies the entire second floor. It includes the bedroom itself, an en suite bath, and a generous terrace. On the ground floor, you're looking at the woods, while on the second floor, you're looking over them. So we added a lot more windows upstairs to take advantage of that. Feeling like you're almost perched in a tree house. This project was our attempt to create a piece of architecture that could be harmonious with nature without disappearing into it. A home that sacrifices none of its comfort for its visual impact. I hope you enjoyed having a look.