Schaum/Shieh's creative retreat in Virginia stands in tune with the natural landscape

When the architect Troy Schaum met prospective clients at a dinner party hosted by mutual friends, a casual conversation about a sketches of a dream house, inspired by the client’s extensive travels in Athens for his anthropological fieldwork, developed into a fully-fledged concept for a house design. Featuring a linear and open floor plan, the home and writer’s retreat known as the Shenandoah House is nestled within the steep slopes of the Allegheny mountains, part of the Appalachian trail in Virginia, and organised as a single line that traces the contours of the site’s topography.

Designing the perfect rural, creative retreat

Comprising three bedrooms, three bathrooms, dining room, living room, study and garage, the spacious, 2,750-square foot home is a linear composition of connected spaces. Rooms extend out from a central mainline, with some embedded into the hillside and others facing the horizon. In between each body, Schaum/Shieh inserted pockets for gardens and outdoor nooks are created on both sides of the home. 

‘The hillside as an old problem in house design was a major motivator. Our clients knew many hilly sites from growing up in the area and their time in Greece. We wanted to intervene gently but opportunistically into the hill,’ says Schaum/Shieh co-principal Rosalyne Shieh.

‘They wanted a house that fit organically, but was not derived from the local vernacular materials or solutions in a straightforward way. We focused on the hill, the seasons, the distant view, and the intimate life of the site.’

Schaum adds, ‘We discovered that by doubling the ridgeline and rounding the peak, we could create a softness that reflects the sloped surroundings. It seemed appropriate on the hillside and took what was a simple, more functional logic and grounded it in the dynamic, undulating nature of the site.’

Taking this approach enabled Schaum/Shieh to avoid cantilevers and other predictable architectural solutions for hillside building. More subtle and in sync with the existing topography, the house’s organic structure not only preserves the site’s inherent state, but accentuates it as well. This continues into the material palette that the firm deployed - a gray metal roof to mirror the lines and volumes of the surrounding slopes, insulated stucco for the body of house that echoes the white finish of Greek seaside architecture, while an Exterior Insulation and Finish Systems cladding nods to local gas stations. 

With windows framing either end of the 120-foot long hall, the house boasts a telescopic effect that’s bookended by a dense forest on one side and a meadow on the other. On the inside, an absence of lights preserves the seamlessness of each room’s ceiling, with lighting emerging from slots at the ceilings’ edges. Unexpected geometric volumes, like curved walls and a geometric hearth and fireplace, also bring a dynamic energy to the interior.

‘We want to make projects that can open up possibilities through their organizational and aesthetic logics. We are not invested in a particular style for its own sake,’ the duo say. ‘This project shows how a simple organization that is worked through in an engaged way with the client and site can open up those kinds of opportunities in design.’

schaumshieh.com