The Bedminster House is a new sustainably designed home with a strong relationship to its context of horse farms and rolling meadows. The family was looking for a house with a single tall space that could be totally flexible for recreation and entertainment. 

The plan was to link all the rooms to it while at the same time each of the zones of the house being able to have unique relationships to the land. The scale of the house itself with a large number of bedrooms and spaces was balanced by the light touch in terms of visual impact of its forms as well as keeping the meadow-like quality of the site. This was achieved by disrupting the environment as little as possible and linking to the local vernacular of horse barns and outbuildings, while creating an innovative new home.

Several features reduce the overall carbon footprint of the building. Designed as a Passive Solar house, the extended roof planes provide shading for the interior spaces. The energy costs are further reduced by the use of geothermal for heating and cooling. The carefully chosen materials include reclaimed stainless steel for the standing seam roof and certified sustainably harvested ipe and American hardwood for the window and door trim, porches and overhangs. 

Ultra wide-board cedar, also a renewable resource, is used as the cladding, with trim-less corner details that create a more abstract silhouette. The exposed stainless steel plate/ipe joinery on the porch structures give character to the house and will minimize long-term maintenance needs.