Today we come out with wood in a house in the deep forest, as a building material and as an omnipresent furniture and interior design element. The petite 85 year old Nancy Copley could easily be mistaken for a wood sprite, standing outside her largely transparent, diamond-shape house in the forested foothills of Accord, New York. That is if the wood sprite had studied architecture and interior design at Pratt Institute and structural engineering at Columbia University and had the aesthetic vision, technical capabilities, and sheer moxie to design and build an ashtonishing and idiosyncratic residence -a testament to organic modernism- on her own time and own dime.
Nancy Copley is an architect specialized in designs that reflect and harmonize with beautiful and unusual natural sites. In fact, her own home can speak eloquently of her work to do the stone work herself, the anchor-tower for the structure, using wood, stone and glass, as well as a copper roof.
The fall of the land suggested the three levels of the house; a triangular boulder near the entrance, its faceted shape. Copley may have learned about architectural flow from snow falling off trees, but she learned stonemasonry by doing it herself. A scale model shows the main structural components: the tower and its adjoining stone foundation, the oak posts and beams that support the copper roof and upper floors, and the oak ribs that frame the extensive glazing.
Around this architectural skeleton, the house is filled with modern wooden furniture, handwoven textiles, pottery, plants, music… and people.
Photos via interiordesign .
