The River House 

The Russian River is a major riparian system that carries water from the snowcaps of the Sierra Range to the Pacific Ocean – Running cool and softly in the summer months,  to a lazy flow in the autumn, it can flood over 50 feet in the storms or winter and completely overrun its narrow banks presenting an interesting challenge to seasonal use and floodproof construction. INTERSTICE renovated a beloved family home to help it better house three generations with expanded living space, new bedrooms and baths, new kitchen and “below decks” a game room, a camping platform with exterior shower, and covered car and boat storage.

An Elevated Living

Up on telephone 40 foot stilts to avoid the 500-year flood level, the house is 30 feet up in the air – and so, its vertical circulation was the first challenge.  A new stairwell weaves a lacework of wooden slats up the south façade – shading the decks, and providing privacy, while gracefully interconnecting the three levels of use.  The lush lawns, and shaded garden patio are always busy in the summer months, with dogs and children everywhere.  The tree house needed both an elevator and a sculptural stairwell to allow quick access from the river and laneway to all levels.  Like a home perched between giant redwood peers, the original structure is enlarged to provide a lighter, expanded home, better connected to the river,  and the new shared social spaces – some of which occupy the comfortable shade of the flood zone volume “Under the Boardwalk.”

Extruding the Section

To honor the earlier structure INTERSTICE designed the extension to extrude the clerestory roof so that it could provide an organizing feature along the spine of the building, providing more light into the core areas of the home.  In connecting the rooms with natural light this element is then expressed as an entry feature toward the laneway.  New stairs on peers allow a simple direct route past the screened outdoor games porch, connecting the lower camping platform with its outdoor shower, gardens, boat shed, utility rooms and elevator, form water-toy storage, all the way up to the new BBQ deck and hot tub at the uppermost living level, and back again.

The Lower Peers 

The space below the house is not to be wasted.  Here mechanical and storage rooms and open-air car charging ports are designed for inundation.  A raw finished screen loft is built in the cool space below the upper social decks with corrugate steel ceilings. It is crossed with redwood struts and pierced by telephone pole pine peers.   This informal living platform below the house is an open-program suspended porch hovering over an informal boat shed, and camp-out space platform with its own wood screened rinse-off shower.  The rest of the under-peers provides at grade enclosure for recreation paraphernalia. Here fiber-concrete panels and flow through flood ports help resist flood damage, allowing water to flow through and easily hosed down after major seasonal flood events; which are more common with every passing year.

 

 

 

 

• Residential