Point Roberts Residence

A young professional couple who wanted to add kids to their lives contacted Rhodes Architecture + Light in May of 2010; they wanted a large, sophisticated house to fit into the humbly rural landscape of this sleepy peninsula. The land that we walked together was a simple undeveloped .4-acre field facing south toward the water of the Strait of Georgia and the San Juan Islands.

​

Working very closely with the owners, we designed a 5,253 square foot house laid out around a long “L”-shaped plan that took advantage of an interior court and placed major spaces along an east-west axis facing the Strait. A large, trellised terrace was laid out and angled to the best views of the San Juan Islands and southern sun. 

​

The difficult challenge was creating a form and expression for a house that is both a complex dwelling for urban clients and appropriately nestled into the landscape of a rural, simple place. We used a very linear, classical plan with open piers in lieu of walls and exposed wood beams to create a bright sophisticated interior. The exterior of the house was expressed as a series of lower wood trellises using large beams and supporting an upper story that uses archetypal forms to suggest agrarian structures. The upper 12:12 pitch standing-seam metal roofs, simple horizontal siding, metal solar brise soleil, and large, simple punched windows all rise above the base of the house into the surrounding rural landscape to suggest a village of basic parts.

Twin girls arrived the year after completion to occupy the upper bedrooms and are growing up in the halls and on land that is now gardens of grasses and raised beds for harvested foods.

​

Read more about this home...