A Communal Retreat for Writers in the Adirondacks

Abstract

This thesis will explore the design of a retreat for writers in Adirondack Park in upper New York State. The intent of the project is to investigate how the 'border' between a group of buildings and the natural wooded landscape in which they sit may be blurred. It is the assumption of the author that rendering indistinct this border between the built and the natural will have bearing on whether a human's relationship to nature is harmonious. This study considers the transition (space, plane, or volume) from built to natural material: how do a compound, a building, and a construction detail meet the natural world in a manner in which the distinction between natural and human built is unconventionally blurred? How do a collection of buildings, a structure, and a detail suggest a harmonious relationship with the natural setting in which, or with which, they sit? The purpose of this thesis is to explore these questions and thus investigate the transition of natural landscape to built work at a variety of scales: the site scale, the building scale, and the detail scale.