Kitsap TreeFarm Cabin

Kevin Scott

• Architects

Designed for a young couple relocating from urban Seattle to rural Kitsap Peninsula, the home was conceived as a homage to the 10-acre site’s natural and manmade history, a celebration of both Northwest forest and forestry through craft, materiality, and reverence for place. Constructed largely of locally grown and harvested woods, the 1,800-square-foot home was designed as an expression of the site’s working tree farm past- embracing the language of local vernacular structures such as barns and fire lookouts, while creating a modern light-filled home carefully integrated into the burgeoning landscape.

An intricately detailed facade of locally harvested cedar siding is an expression of the region’s timber heritage that blends the home with the forest, while the interior’s bright wooden cabinetry and wall surfaces give the clients a place of warmth, comfort, and refuge within. Large expanses of carefully placed windows give each room connection to the forest and meadow, while narrow skylight apertures allow the region’s shifting atmosphere to animate the interiors throughout the seasons.

The 2-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom house was sited in such a way to minimize tree loss, with a compact footprint that preserved space for native meadow plantings and edible garden beds. An existing logging road was repurposed as the primary driveway access, and a clearing atop a gentle slope with views overlooking the meadow and upper tree canopy was selected for construction. The home’s tower-like presence in the clearing creates a cross-sectional experience of the site, integrating the clients’ daily lives with the landscape from meadow to forest understory, and through lush canopy above.