Maria Ibañez de Sendadiano and Todd Rouhe met at work back when they were both young architects at Smith-Miller + Hawkinson. That was a while ago: the couple have been running their own NYC firm, IdS/R Architecture, since 2000, have two daughters who are now teenagers, and recently found themselves in the happy position of being able to build their own country retreat in New York’s Catskill Mountains.
After years of hiking and camping in the area as a family, they bought a choice piece of land in the township of Mount Tremper surrounded by DEP-owned protected property (it’s on the watershed that supplies NYC’s tap water). This was their first designed-from-the-ground-up house and gave them the opportunity to test ideas—and to get their own hands extremely dirty.
They wanted foremost to build a structure with as little impact as possible, and towards that end decided to follow Passive House standards, a set of stringent rules for creating an ultra-efficient, air-tight dwelling that supplies most of its own energy via solar panels. To save on costs and stay on top of an ambitious construction schedule, the couple also decided to act in tandem as their own general contractor. It took them six months to build the house and another six months to finish the interior. Join us for a visit into the woods.
Photography by Eric Petschek, courtesy of IdS/R Architecture and Vipp.
Above: Modeled after a traditional longhouse layout, the structure has a central living space with bedrooms at either end and multi-purpose loft spaces stacked over them.
The building is composed of SIPs (prefabricated structural insulated panels), the Passive House building blocks, which Todd notes helped determine the look: “If you using SIPs, then you’re not making a glass house.” The building rests on a steel frame platform raised on piers that, Maria explains, “limited the disruption to the existing site drainage.” Terraced steps lead to the front deck and four sliding glass doors (there are also four doors off the back). The mechanical room is in a concrete cellar and contains, among other things, the ERV system (energy recovery ventilation) crucial to Passive House design. The only trees that had to be taken down made way for the driveway.
Above: The exterior is clad in larch, which was also applied throughout the interior. It has a standing seam metal roof, a favorite of architects (see Hardscaping 101), and on the nearby septic field there are 24 solar panels that between May and November generate enough power to run everything in the house (“we actually sell power back to the grid,” says Todd).,
The aluminum-framed, thermally insulated glass doors are 8 by 8 feet—”the maximum size for a lift and slide door,” says Maria—and, like the triple-glazed windows, were supplied by Schüco. This one, on the north end of the house, opens to the kitchen, outfitted with a freestanding island made by Vipp of Denmark. That’s also the iconic Vipp Pedal Bin in the foreground (we singled it out in Remodelista, A Manual for the Considered Home in our roundup of 100 favorite everyday objects).
Above: Maria and Todd installed all of the interior walls themselves. Their choice of the powder-coated steel island was both aesthetic and practical: “we love that Vipp’s kitchen designs are modular; this came as a prefabricated unit,” says Todd. (Vipp is a hands-on, family-run company: Sofie Egelund, granddaughter of the inventor of the Vipp bin, runs US operations with her husband, Frank Christensen Egelund, and came to the site to oversee installation.)
Above: The island is fitted with a sink, dishwasher, and induction cooktop. Additional storage is supplied by a cabinet wall pre-fabricated by Colorado-based CabParts that Marie and Todd painted (Farrow & Ball’s Strong White) and installed. In lieu of a range, they opted for a wall oven. The ladder on the wall leads to one of the two lofts at either end of the house.,
Above: Todd and Maria designed and built their kitchen table: it’s composed of furniture-grade birch plywood bolted to an anodized aluminum base assembled from parts they had in their office. In addition to using their own designs and Vipp’s expanding line (including this gray Wool Rug), the couple gravitated to furniture by Hay: the Danish studio’s Result Chairs are shown here in oak.
Above: The table stands next to a built-in pantry with drawers of unfinished birch ply and white doors. It, too, came from CabParts, “a good resource for DIYers,” says Todd. “Their cabinets are a bit better quality than Ikea’s, and they offer more custom specifications on sizes—but you need to fill out a very tedious form.”
“The pantry is really the key to our kitchen’s operations,” adds Todd. “It’s the place where all the small appliances and mugs, and things like water bottles go. When the doors are closed, you don’t know it’s there.”
,
Above: The kitchen is open to the expansive central living room furnished with an L-shaped sectional Mags sofa by Hay and Wool Pillows by Vipp.
The passageways lead to a mudroom and small bath on one side and a bedroom on the other, all paneled in larch.
Above: A Rondo stove by Rais supplements sub-floor radiant heating. (The niche is filled with logs from the cleared trees on the property.) “Our goal is to be as close to net zero as possible,” says Todd. “Right now, only our boiler draws power from the electrical grid, and that’s between November and April.”
Above: The house overlooks woodland— the interior and exterior colors were selected to blend with the outdoors. Towards that end, the entire main floor is lined with Summitville quarry tile in rock-like Elephant Gray. “Quarry tile is an interior-exterior tile traditionally used in bakeries and commercial spaces; it’s stronger than ceramic and is relatively inexpensive,” says Todd.
Above: Paneled in larch, the bedrooms have a modernist cabin feel. The desk is the Copenhague 90 by Hay and the bedside sconces are Wall Spots by Vipp.,
Above: Accessed by a stair, the loft on the southern end of the house is furnished with daybeds of cabinet-grade birch ply that Maria and Todd designed for the space. They can be moved together to form a larger bed.
Above: “Our place was a bit of a research project for us,” says Maria. The couple are currently at work for clients on another energy-efficient house in the area.
Above: The floor plans detail the basement mechanical room, the longhouse layout of the main floor, and the two lofts (the one on the north end has an en suite bath).
Here are three more energy-efficient rural dwellings:
- A Barn-Style House for the Future, Hudson Valley Edition
- A Barn Transformed for Modern Living
- A Young Couple’s DIY, Totally Off-the-Grid Cabin in the New Hampshire Woods
