Redd House - Country Home in Springwater, NY

Rendered Site Elevation Looking from Pond

Typical Building Wall Section Detail / Typical Building Plan Section Corner Detail

REDD HOUSE - COUNTRY HOME IN SPRINGWATER, NY.

Redd House was designed for longtime client Richard Reddington. After running his successful restaurant Redd in Napa Valley, the Michelin starred chef decided to return to his familial roots in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York and open a new restaurant, also named Redd in Rochester, NY. Both projects can be viewed in WORKS. In addition to bringing his culinary touch to the region, Richard was drawn home to be closer to his family and worked with Guzy Architects to create a small country home on his family’s land in the rolling hills near Honeoye Lake.

The form of the house is long and thin in the north-south axis and consists of a single loft-like space with a glazed separation at the bedroom that is bathed in natural light throughout the day. The house is sited just beyond the edge of a wooded area atop an open meadow sloping down towards a pond. The broad east facade takes in the morning light, while providing views of the meadow and pond. An outdoor room is created by the enclosing wall of trees on three sides and the west side of the house. The form of the roof is an inverted asymmetrical pitch with a smooth uninterrupted birch veneer plywood ceiling that draws southern and northern light through high transom windows. Where the pitched roofs meet, a copper gutter is notched into the roof, channelling rainwater to a cistern that is used for irrigation in the garden.

Richard’s joy for cooking is a major inspiration of the design, with an open kitchen in the main space and a large outdoor cooking area at the west terrace. Not only is it a place of respite, but is also a laboratory for experimentation and inspiration, a place to create and perfect dishes outside the bustle of his restaurant. The fenced-in garden for fresh produce, the large table for tasting, and the outdoor shower complete this outdoor room.

The living room’s large windows span between exposed Douglas fir columns and each contains a tall vertical sash permitting excellent cross ventilation. A robustly insulated envelope and triple glazed windows utilize the polished concrete floor slab as an effective heat storing thermal mass. The design of the house was predicated on these design strategies, producing excellent long term sustainable passive energy efficiencies. To the south, a screened-in covered patio below the loft space serves to extend the living room in the warm months. Exposed tensioned steel cable cross bracing at the north and south ends of the house provides rigidity with an honest structural expression. The house is sided in rough cedar shakes, providing a natural organic textural effect to its precisely rendered form.

The 1,600 square foot house has a small footprint, but the sloping ceiling that draws your view up and past the interior, together with the large glazed openings, and interior to exterior connections create a home that is at once intimate and spatially grand.

Construction is scheduled to begin in Spring, 2021.



November 2020

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