Westport Meadow House

Westport, Massachusetts

This one-story home nestles into a forty-acre meadow on the Westport River, and was designed to convey a certain ambiguity between interior and exterior spaces. An 1,800 sf deck stretches along the western elevation and perforates the plan at the entry, creating a modified dogtrot.  Enclosed by the living room and master bedroom, this dogtrot space becomes an “interiorized” outdoor room and a threshold between public and private spaces. Opening onto the deck, large sliding doors at the living room and master bedroom corners provide light and cross-ventilation deep into the body of the home, and when fully open allow the rooms to be read as if they are screened porches. Floor and ceiling planes in the living room and bedrooms continue outside the house to the decks, furthering the ambiguity between interior and exterior. 

Daylight passes through clerestory on four sides of the living room, illuminating the volume with changing patterns throughout the day and across the seasons. A thick wood-clad wall conceals all storage, HVAC, kitchen appliances, and laundry areas at the center of the plan in order to preserve the unobstructed connection to the landscape on either side. The kitchen, breakfast area, and office face east to take in morning light, while the combined living and dining room and decks face west and south for afternoon sunsets. Deep overhangs on the western elevation shade the expansive glass, accentuating the overall horizontality of the house and connecting it to the horizon by way of the meadow and river beyond. The home was published in the June 2007 issue of Architectural Digest. Landscape design by Reed Hilderbrand.