Viewmaster 2005
Awbrey Butte, Bend Oregon

One of our first commissions, designed in 2005, under our original partnership known as PIQUE collaborative, with Peter Jahnke of JLA Architects, now located in Belgium.

This project is conceived as a telescopic instrument that may control, or give limits to the overwhelmingly expansive vista the site offers. This perched lot has 180° views of the Cascade Mountains (west) and high desert (east) as well as a romantic vantage point looking over the city in the valley below. In order to give boundaries to these perspectives, the house takes shape as two lenses. One (the public lens) focuses on the city below, and the other (private lens) projects to Paulina Peak on the horizon beyond the city. Each lens has an open loft layout so that the controlled vistas may be enjoyed to the depths of the house. As one moves closer to the ‘perspective window’ the 180° vista is slowly revealed.

The two lenses are shifted in section as they respond to their respective vantage points, program stresses and site contours and are acoustically and experientially separated by an atrium that holds the primary vertical circulation.

We offer a special thanks to the neighborhood design review board, who, after quite a lot of discussion and contemplation, agreed to approve this home for construction.  Unfortunately the home was never built.

Project Credits