Valley Pond Addition

Temperate & Tropical Greenhouses

Lincoln, MA

Architect: george schnee

This addition was built for a young couple in the early 1990’s. The existing house is a deck House (Acton MA). built by a local company founded just after WWII. This simple prefabricated house features modern exposed post and beam construction, t&G cedar cathedral ceiling and vertical cedar siding. It is the quintessential mid-century modern house. fortunately, the Deck House company was still fabricating houses when we engaged this project so we were able to use their mahogany windows for the addition. The addition features tropical and temperate passive solar green houses as well as an octagonal observation tower offering a 360 degree view to the pond and surrounding forrest. the shape of the addition is a fragmented octagon which steps over the ledge outcropping. The complex geometrical precision combined with the irregular ledge outcropping on which the building sits made for challenging foundation work. the tower is crowned with an oculus for which we created a specialized steel connector to join the eight rafters. We remained faithful to the rich materials and style of the original Deck house our finish choices. The Artisan Builder shop fabricated the insulated glass shoji style doors leading to the greenhouses, interior frosted glass shojis as well as the frame for a pair of antique Balinese temple Shutters used for an interior balcony.