SADDLE RIVER HOUSE
Saddle River, New Jersey
This house, built on a wooded bluff overlooking a river, was designed for the speculative housing market in semi-rural New Jersey. Environmental and zoning regulations offered challenging site constraints, which were viewed as an opportunity to exaggerate the differences between each face of the house – small punched openings in the masonry front and sides, and a fully glazed rear façade. The plan is arranged as a group of independent volumes in which services are housed, with the larger public spaces located between them. Room adjacencies allow for a horizontal flexibility of program, as the chimney mass, an adjacent sky-lit shaft, and additional vertical slots visually connect the floors. A cantilevered deck over the bluff and a two-story porch extend the plan organization beyond the façade and into the landscape.
