Horizontal Design Shapes an Artist's Refuge as a Pinwheel of Timber Roofs in the Hudson Valley

Some houses begin with a brief. Others begin with a conversation that stretches over years, accumulating shared references until the architecture becomes a kind of extended dialogue. The Artist Residence and Studio in Catskill, New York, designed by Horizontal Design, belongs firmly to the latter category. Director Bing Ju first met the clients, artist Emily and her husband Wolf, at a New York gathering in late 2018. What followed was a six-year design process rooted in a mutual affinity for Eastern philosophy, and it shows in every quiet, deliberate move the building makes.

What makes this 1,026-square-meter residence compelling is not any single gesture but the disciplined restraint with which it meets its site. Set among the dormant grasses and bare hardwoods of the Hudson Valley, the house reads from above as a pinwheel of angled roof planes radiating from carved-out courtyards. The low profile and muted material palette of standing-seam metal, white stucco, board-formed concrete, and timber allow the building to sit within the rolling topography rather than on top of it. The result is a house that functions simultaneously as domestic shelter, working studio, and contemplative retreat.

A Low Profile Written into the Landscape

From a distance, the residence barely registers against the Catskill terrain. Its rooflines slope at gentle pitches that mirror the surrounding hills, and its overall height stays well below the tree canopy. The decision to spread the program horizontally rather than stack it vertically is critical: it gives every room a ground-level relationship with the landscape while keeping the building's mass from dominating any single view.

Winter photographs reveal the strategy most clearly. With the trees stripped bare and the grasses dormant, the white stucco walls nearly vanish against overcast skies, while the metal roof planes catch just enough light to trace the building's angular geometry. The architecture does not compete with the land. It defers to it.

Roof as Primary Element

The most assertive architectural element here is the roof. Long timber cantilevers extend well beyond the building envelope, sheltering walls of glass and concrete beneath deep overhangs. At dusk, the underside of the timber soffit glows warm against the cool sky, giving the house a lantern-like quality without resorting to transparency on all sides. The cantilevers also serve a practical function, protecting floor-to-ceiling glazing from direct solar gain and driving rain.

The angled roof planes are not merely formal. Seen from above, they organize the plan into distinct wings that radiate outward, each tilted slightly off axis from its neighbor. The resulting pinwheel creates pockets of outdoor space, courtyards that are partially enclosed yet open to the sky, mediating between the privacy of the interior and the openness of the surrounding meadow.

Concrete, Wood, and the Threshold Condition

The material logic is straightforward but well executed. Board-formed concrete anchors the base of the building, its rough horizontal imprint giving weight and texture to the walls that meet the ground. Above, timber soffits and oak surfaces take over, warming the spaces that receive the most human contact. White stucco fills in between, acting as a neutral background that lets the concrete and wood do the talking.

The entry sequence makes this transition legible. A covered approach under the timber soffit leads past a stacked-stone water feature and a gravel ground plane before one crosses into the interior. The gravel courtyard, framed by steel columns and concrete panels, hosts a weathered stone sculpture that signals the client's artistic sensibility without turning the threshold into a gallery. It is a modest, calibrated welcome.

Living Spaces Organized Around Light and View

Inside, the primary living volume operates beneath a vaulted plywood ceiling that amplifies the sense of openness without resorting to excessive height. Oak millwork runs continuously along walls and cabinetry, unifying kitchen, dining, and living areas into a single warm interior. Glass doors open directly to the courtyard, collapsing the boundary between inside and out when weather permits.

The dining area, tucked into a corner with windows on two sides, exemplifies the house's approach to framing. Rather than panoramic glazing, the architects use carefully positioned corner windows that direct attention outward toward the walled courtyard and the trees beyond. Hanging scrolls on an adjacent wall reinforce the Eastern philosophical underpinnings that shaped the client-architect relationship from the outset.

Rooms for Making and Thinking

The studio wing is where the building earns its title. Clerestory windows and a ribbon skylight wash the timber floor with shifting bands of natural light, giving the workspace the even, diffused illumination an artist needs without the glare of a fully glazed wall. A tall window beside a work surface lets Emily survey the landscape while stepping back from a canvas. The room reads as serious, functional, and free of domestic clutter.

Nearby, a meditation room lined in wood paneling receives indirect perimeter lighting that washes a stepped ceiling. It is a deliberately introverted space, sealed off from views, designed to turn attention inward. The contrast with the studio, which opens outward to sky and land, is intentional. Together, these rooms establish a polarity between observation and reflection that structures daily life in the house.

Intimate Details at Domestic Scale

Horizontal Design shows real care in the smaller moments. A built-in bookshelf above a corner sofa pairs with a horizontal window that frames bare trees at eye level when seated. A narrow desk beside a tall vertical window becomes a display surface for small sculptures, each catching its own sliver of light. A library wall integrates shelving and a daybed under a wide curtained window, turning a reading nook into a place one might spend an entire afternoon.

These are not showpiece details. They are calibrated responses to specific habits of living: reading, collecting, pausing. The consistency of oak and plywood surfaces across all of them creates a continuity that holds the house together even as it sprawls across its pinwheel plan.

Private Quarters and Gallery Moments

The bedroom wing maintains the material warmth of the public spaces but dials down the scale. A carved canopy bed sits against floor-to-ceiling glass that opens to a sunlit terrace, making the sleeping area feel like an extension of the garden. The hallway leading to it doubles as a gallery corridor, its oak flooring, wood-paneled walls, and recessed niches providing a quiet backdrop for framed artwork.

A continuous horizontal window in another passage displays framed drawings on a counter below, catching afternoon light in a way that feels both curated and effortless. The house never separates art from domestic life. Every corridor, shelf, and sill is a potential surface for the work that happens here.

Plans and Drawings

The floor plan confirms what the aerial views suggest: angled residential volumes radiate from a central courtyard, each wing tilted to follow the topographic contours of the site. The pinwheel arrangement avoids long corridors by giving each programmatic zone, living, studio, bedroom, meditation, its own wing with direct landscape access. Courtyards carved between the wings act as outdoor rooms, providing light, air, and visual separation between functions.

Why This Project Matters

The Artist Residence and Studio is a reminder that the most persuasive residential architecture often comes from long, patient collaborations. Six years is an unusual timeline for a private house, but the duration is legible in the precision of the details, the consistency of the material logic, and the way each room responds to a specific ritual of living and working. Horizontal Design did not impose a style. They absorbed a worldview and gave it spatial form.

The project also makes a quiet case for horizontal domesticity in a landscape that could easily have been overwhelmed by architectural ambition. By keeping the building low, spreading it across the terrain, and letting the roof do the formal work, the architects produced a house that grows more convincing the longer you spend with it. In Catskill's rolling hills, that kind of patience feels entirely appropriate.

Artist Residence and Studio in NY by Horizontal Design (Lead Team: Bing Ju, Ling Yang, Qinchao Pan). Located in Catskill, United States. 1,026 m². Completed in 2025.

About the Studio

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