Inside A Mansion Built On The Edge Of An Abandoned Quarry | Unique Spaces | Architectural Digest
Summary
TLDRArchitect Stephen Harris discusses his design for the Bedford Quarry House, built on a unique site within an hour of New York City. The property, once a functioning quarry, now features a home that blends with its natural surroundings, utilizing the site's dramatic stone walls and water elements. Harris explains how the design takes inspiration from the natural landscape, aiming for a seamless connection between indoor and outdoor spaces. The house is crafted to evoke a sense of tranquility and discovery, with attention to detail that subtly reveals more with time.
Takeaways
- 🌿 The Bedford Quarry house is built on a challenging site, atop a 40-foot tall stone wall, offering a unique geological and architectural opportunity.
- 🏞️ The location, once a functioning quarry filled with feldspar and rose quartz, was abandoned due to water accumulation, but the site's natural beauty remains intact.
- 🏠 The architect, Stephen Harris, aimed to create a design that harmonized with the environment, incorporating the natural elements of the landscape, including water and vegetation.
- 🌳 The house was designed with the flow of light, wind, and daily life in mind, carefully considering how the family would use the space throughout the day.
- 🔀 The design incorporates the concept of liminal spaces, creating a sequence of reveals, as visitors gradually discover different aspects of the house and its surroundings.
- 📐 The architecture induces movement by offering varied views from different rooms, encouraging exploration throughout the house.
- 🍽️ The house features a practical design, including a back kitchen for functional purposes, allowing the family to maintain a clean and organized living space.
- 🛏️ The primary bedroom and bathroom are designed with comfort and practicality in mind, offering scenic views and thoughtful details to enhance daily routines.
- 🌿 The landscape design by David Kelly complements the house, creating a harmonious blend of vegetation and rock, with features like a waterfall to enhance the atmosphere of tranquility.
- 🎯 The architect’s ultimate goal was to make the house feel effortless and inevitable, blending seamlessly with its environment while offering comfort, serenity, and subtlety.
Q & A
What is the Bedford Quarry house and where is it located?
-The Bedford Quarry house is a residential project designed by architect Stephen Harris. It is located within an hour of New York but gives a feeling of being much further away, like Montana.
What makes the site of the Bedford Quarry house unique?
-The site is unique because it was a functioning quarry, featuring natural elements like feldspar and rose quartz. It was abandoned when water was discovered, creating a challenging yet beautiful site with water and dense vegetation.
What was the condition of the original house on the site?
-There was a different house on the site before, which had fallen into disrepair. The architect and owners decided to start from scratch, designing a completely new structure.
How did the concept of ‘liminal condition’ influence the design?
-The concept of a 'liminal condition,' or transitional spaces, was central to the design. As you approach the house, the design teases glimpses of the structure, and then you lose sight of it before it reveals itself again as you move closer.
How does the house integrate with the natural environment?
-The house is carefully positioned to respond to the natural elements of the site, such as the light, wind, and terrain. The design also emphasizes a relationship with the water and the surrounding quarry walls.
What architectural elements induce movement in the house?
-Movement is encouraged by the varying views from different rooms. Instead of giving the same view from every room, the house reveals new vistas as one moves through it, keeping the experience dynamic.
What is unique about the garage design in the Bedford Quarry house?
-The garage door is designed with a single pane of glass inspired by airplane hangars. It integrates seamlessly with the rest of the house, allowing a view through both sides.
What is the concept behind the interior design of the main living space?
-The main living space transitions from intimate, cave-like areas to more open, Promontory-like spaces that reveal stunning views of the quarry, dock, and waterfall.
How does the house achieve a balance between interior and exterior spaces?
-The design blurs the boundary between inside and outside. The landscape is treated as part of the house, with carefully positioned terraces, window openings, and views that make the outdoors feel integrated with the interior.
What is the intention behind the subdued nature of the architecture and interior design?
-The architect's goal was for the house to appear effortless and inevitable, avoiding a 'wow' factor. The design aims for subtlety, where visitors gradually notice the depth and complexity of the house, much like rewatching a movie or rereading a book to discover more layers.
Outlines
🏠 Building on a Quarry: A Unique Architectural Challenge
Architect Stephen Harris discusses the design of the Bedford Quarry house, situated on top of a 40-foot stone wall. The site, a former feldspar and quartz quarry that was abandoned due to flooding, presented a unique geological challenge. Harris views such difficult sites as opportunities, appreciating the natural beauty of the trees and water. The new house, designed for a young family, was meticulously planned based on how they live, with considerations for light, wind, and daily activity. The approach to the house is deliberately planned to tease the viewer with glimpses of the home before arriving in a courtyard.
🏞️ Spaces Between: Architecture that Encourages Movement
Harris emphasizes the importance of inducing movement through architecture. If every room has the same view, there is little incentive to move. He highlights subtle design elements that create visual connections, like the lines in rocks mirrored in a rug. The design includes a back kitchen to hide mess during entertaining, and a media room, humorously called the 'polka dot room.' The model of the house illustrates how its two main volumes connect, with the public spaces located in a dramatic setting, overlooking the quarry.
🌳 Embracing Nature: Thoughtful Integration of Landscape and Architecture
Harris explains how the house balances nature and architecture. The primary bedroom offers stunning views of the quarry and waterfall, with functional design elements enhancing daily rituals like dressing or brushing teeth. A sedum roof absorbs sound, enhancing the tranquility of the space. The landscape, designed by David Kelly, emphasizes local vegetation, making it appear as though it naturally emerged from the quarry. The house’s brick wall, with its irregular texture and a skylight above, adds warmth and character to the interiors, while children's rooms offer privacy and comfort.
🌿 Seamless Integration: Blurring the Lines Between Indoors and Outdoors
The architecture aims to eliminate the boundary between the inside and outside. By positioning the pool and other amenities throughout the site, the design encourages people to explore and appreciate both the quarry and the surrounding woodland. Harris draws inspiration from Oscar Niemeyer's work, emphasizing the effortless integration of landscape and architecture. He aspires for the house to appear natural and inevitable, hoping that guests will find serenity and comfort without being overtly impressed by the architecture, instead discovering the depth of the design over time.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Quarry
💡Liminal condition
💡Promontory
💡Reveal and arrival
💡Waterfall
💡Cave and Promontory
💡Landscape integration
💡Brick wall
💡Effortless and inevitable
💡Public and private spaces
Highlights
Architect Stephen Harris designed the Bedford Quarry House, a unique home built on a challenging site, previously a feldspar and rose quartz quarry.
The quarry was abandoned when they hit water, which now plays a significant role in the house's design, integrating the natural water features into the living experience.
The house is located within an hour of New York but feels remote, offering a blend of natural beauty and seclusion.
Harris views the difficult site as an 'extraordinary geological opportunity,' emphasizing how the house responds to the natural terrain.
The house’s design uses a sequence of 'reveal and arrival,' creating moments where parts of the house are deliberately hidden before being unveiled, enhancing the experience of moving through the space.
One of the home’s main features is a 40-foot tall stone wall, which the house is built on top of, blending into the landscape.
The design incorporates a unique garage with a single pane glass door inspired by airplane hangars, maintaining transparency and connection with the surroundings.
The home’s staircase does not conform to conventional geometry, adding an artistic, sculptural element to the space while linking different levels of the house.
The main public floor includes a cozy family space with a kitchen, dining area, and sitting room, strategically positioned to offer views of the quarry and surrounding landscape.
The house employs a 'cave and promontory' approach, where some rooms feel intimate and enclosed, while others open up to expansive views of the quarry and water.
A corner of the house is cantilevered over the edge of the quarry, providing breathtaking views of the water and a sheer rock face, reminiscent of the Palisades.
A secondary kitchen, or 'back kitchen,' is included to keep the main kitchen tidy after meals, allowing for functionality and ease during family gatherings.
The house's design incorporates elements from classical architecture, including references to the palazzo style, with bedrooms located on upper floors for privacy and protection.
A sedum roof, which changes with the seasons, enhances the house's eco-friendliness and connection to the natural environment.
The home emphasizes blending the boundary between indoor and outdoor spaces, with the landscape serving as a 'foreground' that extends the living experience beyond the walls of the house.
Transcripts
foreign
I wanted to make sure that the materials
the palette the character of the house
was responsive to the site it's not
often that you're building on top of a
40-foot tall stone wall
hi I'm Stephen Harris I am the architect
of the Bedford Quarry house
it is within an hour of New York but it
feels like you could be in Montana
[Music]
this was a functioning Quarry
feldspar rose quartz things of that sort
the reason the Quarry was abandoned was
because they hit water
many architects
prefer working on
nice flat buildable sites I'm much more
interested in difficult sites I looked
at it as this extraordinary geological
opportunity and the fact that it had so
much water in it and the vegetation in
the trees were so beautiful
when the owners found the site there was
a house on it it was a very different
house and to be charitable it had a bit
of deferred maintenance we started over
we worked very hard
to figure out how the owner actually
lives it's a young family and we're
figuring out the site where the light is
where the wind is how things operate
over the course of the day
almost 50 years ago the man in the class
ahead of mine at Princeton had written a
thesis called psychoanalysis and the
place of arrival was that the process of
moving from one condition to another one
can parse and divide into stages what he
referred to as a liminal condition
that was one of the Ambitions for this
house taking from the approach you see a
glimpse of where you're going to go
at a piece of the house a kind of tease
if you will
then you lose sight of it the road bends
around it comes up it rises you come
back around to the back side of the
house and you're in a courtyard
then there was a stair that takes you
down to the main level
then as you come out onto the Terrace as
you approach
that edge you can see the water
it is the space between things
[Music]
as you approach the house the one
opening in these two walls is where they
intersect that brick wall conceptually
and literally slides through the
building
if you look carefully you'll see the
garage that's the top of the garage door
it's a single pane garage door based on
an airplane hangar
as you can see on both sides it's glass
all the way through here
this is conceptually avoid
the stair needed to be figurative it
needed to be something which did not
conform to either geometry
as you come down
you begin for the first time
to see the other side of the Quarry
Terrace is out here all of that so you
have a sense that this is where the main
public floor is
in here then is the room where I think
they spend the vast majority of their
time like many younger families
it's got a great kitchen
it's got a dining area and it has a
sitting area
one of two ways in which one talks about
building on a sloping site the two ways
you do it are the cave and the
Promontory so as we move from one
condition to the other this end of the
room is actually cozy intimate
and then as you move farther in it
begins to reveal itself
you see that problem there you see the
little pathway that goes down to the
dock
and this is the corner that is Kathy
levered over the edge
so finally at this point
you've got the waterfall you've got the
Quarry you've got that incredibly
beautiful sheer face almost like the
Palisades on the other side so in some
ways
it's a calibrated sequence of reveal and
of arrival
I think it's very important that
architecture induce movement
when every single room has the same view
there's really no reason to move
the Interiors are relatively muted and
they're subtle little tropes like if you
look at the lines in those rocks
and you look at the little lines in this
rug
there's this kind of
of reference that occurs there obviously
this Stone and that wall bear some
formal relationship
there's also a little tiny balcony up
here off of this side so
if you have some friend who smokes
cigars you know it's a place where you
can stash him
another thing that we've increasingly
done is
when you have an open kitchen where
everyone is hanging out
I think it's important to have a back
kitchen a part of the kitchen that is
out of sight so looking over that way
you'll see that there is
a second sink a lot of storage there are
dishwashers back there so you could have
a nice meal all of that and then put all
the aftermath over there and deal with
the tomorrow
[Music]
this can be divided off you can close
off this room more for acoustical
reasons than for privacy
this is then the media room aka the
polka dot room
it also happens to have
a model of the house
we are right about here now so you can
see from this that the house is actually
two boxes
it's this box which was the garage that
had the garage door that shut
this is the slot that goes through that
we came in on
this is then the two-story piece you can
see the topography here and how dramatic
this thing drops away
[Music]
it goes back to Libby
if you read Livia about where the
bedrooms go and where the public groups
go and a palazzo there's a whole passage
about how the ground floor is about
fortification the main floor the piano
Noble where all the public rooms are the
bedrooms are above that I think
subliminally it has to do with
protection
this is in the primary bedroom which
has a not bad view the waterfall the
Quarry The Far Side one of the things we
sometimes don't take enough thought to
is the kind of rituals of getting up in
the morning getting dressed
going to bed at night packing a suitcase
all of that a place to toss your clothes
in the evening or to lay out what you're
going to wear
this is the primary bathroom
which has two little chapels off of it
one of which is the loo the other of
which is the shower I hate brushing my
teeth and looking myself in the mirror
and I'd much rather stand here and look
at that waterfall as I brush my teeth
then stare at myself
two closets
I bet you that one's his
above the fireplace that's in the living
room coming directly up
this is also a sedum roof it's just
coming back from the winter
there's something magical about the
sound of that waterfall it eliminates
every piece of stray sound you can hear
this is the one place where you could
look down into that little Courtyard
that's the beginning of
a trail
that goes around all of the water comes
back the other side has steps down to
the water the dock the boat all of that
as you may know a lot of ponds have
little fountains in them and things like
that
that's to aerate the water and to
prevent algae growth and things of that
sort in this case we figured out another
way of doing it or David Kelly did which
was to just pump a little piece of the
water up to the top and let it come and
fall down as a waterfall it has the
other great advantage of giving a kind
of Tranquility throughout here
we were from the beginning on this
project with David Kelly who is a
landscape architect and a partner in
Rhys Robertson partners
and
working closely with him there was an
idea about
vegetation that might initially appear
wild it is something whose color and its
texture it could have been
dug out of the Quarry and ground into
gravel so it has that kind of
local character to it
this is the continuation of that brick
wall that was outside we chose a brick
that was slightly irregular it's not
perfectly flat and it gives a texture to
this wall
there's a skylight that runs the entire
length
of this brick wall
the children's rooms have window seats
these trees are set here to give a
little bit of privacy to these rooms
that's Reese Roberts they designed these
rooms the furniture the cool light
fixtures
when you're here there's a sense of
stability you don't feel like you're on
top of a mountain or something there are
other things that are about the same
height that you are by stepping this
Terrace out
to follow the profile of the Quarry we
were able to Lounge here and look at all
of that
the dining area over here is probably
the one that's the most exposed I mean
it's the only place that's farther out
than that
but you know from here
you can actually
see the water the dock
everything
I also think it's nice to look at the
house from here so it's a nice view of
the house I think
a little biased probably
what we were trying to do was eliminate
the boundary between the inside and the
outside we didn't need the window to
provide a foreground
we've worked very hard for the spaces
outside of that the landscape to provide
that foreground the idea is that perhaps
there are no walls perhaps you're
outside all the time
one of the things about our choice to
locate the pool
over there it's because we're trying to
distribute the amenities and
destinations throughout the site
so this is a very different idea about
landscape may have something to do with
a rock and a pool outside of Rio by
Niemeyer
when you're looking at all of those
things the Quarry the Promontory all of
that it's difficult to appreciate
how beautiful just being and a woodland
is and how magical that is
if there were two adjectives for a
project that are my greatest ambition
it's for a project to appear
effortless
and inevitable
if someone comes over to the house I
would prefer that they'd not be wowed
I would prefer that they not know
who the architect is
I would hope that there would be a kind
of ease Serenity comfort
I would love it if they began to notice
and realize there's a lot more there
than what they can see
I'm sure you've seen films or read books
and you want to see it again
or you want to read it again or you want
to hear it again you know there's more
there you've just seen parts of it
foreign
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