LID Architecture - Stepping House, Arainn Mhor Island
Stepping House, Arainn Mhor Island
Experimental Holiday House
This project was an exploration of the informal qualities of home. A method was developed to remake the landscape as a series of platforms in the hillside that step up through the building following the existing contours of the site. This move amplified the qualities of this small sites topography and the drama of the surrounding landscape. It also resulted in open and continuous social areas conducive to holiday living.
Thus a micro landscape is created within the building and movement through the house becomes a journey across this landscape of platforms. The journey is made memorable by giving each of these platforms a different orientation and relationship to the surrounding landscape.
To mediate and intensify the occupants’ relationship to the surroundings, outdoor living areas were created which are both integrated into the house and imbedded in the landscape; An Out Door Room, set into the hillside, is sheltered from wind and rain but catches the sunlight and is heated with an outdoor fireplace; A tapis vert or grassed plateau projects out into the landscape and forms the only cultivated territory in the site, and acts like a balcony in the greater landscape.
Tegral.com: Building of the Month July 2019
RIAI Awards 2006: This project was selected for Exhibition