✕

Location: Hillsborough, North Carolina
Project size: 3,400 square feet

Program: Nestled in a wooded site in rural North Carolina and overlooking a small pond, Dogtrot House is the primary residence for a family of four that pays tribute to its namesake, a vernacular housing type common in the Southeastern United States. With its connection to the outdoors, the plan brings the rituals of daily life closer to nature.

Design Solution: In response to the clients’ desire for a house where they could be surrounded by both family and nature, the the project expands and reframes the traditional dogtrot house plan, which historically occupied a single story with two enclosed living areas, one public and one private, united by a covered exterior breezeway. In this new adaptation, the house is comprised of four pavilions that are pulled apart to allow views between them for an encompassing experience of the outdoors while inside. These low pavilions provide independent areas for activities off a continuous 100-foot-long flexible central space: eating and engaging along one side, resting and reflecting along the other.  The central space frames a view of the pond and can easily transform into a breezy outdoor living room via large sliding glass doors that open at either end onto shaded porches. The volume serves as the core of the house, combining a floating blackened steel stair, a custom oak table and storage, a powder room, and a fireplace.

Photo © Keith Isaacs

Structure and Materials: The house is an assemblage of forms and materials reflecting the ecological diversity of the site. Board-formed concrete arcs contrast with volumes of polished CMU block. Red steel columns recall the color of North Carolina clay. A black metal roof and fiber cement siding sits in the shadows of the surrounding forest. Dark-colored earthen tiles ground the home like bedrock. A cathedral ceiling of Southern Yellow Pine laminated decking and exposed glulam beams incorporates an open loft of heart pine plywood. The flat roofs of the adjacent pavilions act as diaphragms to resist the horizontal thrust from the central gable.

Additional Information
Completion date: April 2023
Site size: 10 acres
Total construction cost: Withheld
Client/Owner: Withheld

Photos © Keith Isaacs

Images courtesy Studio Becker Xu; click to enlarge