Meadow Meets Forest

Saint Ignatius, Montana
Completed in 2009

Meadow Meets Forest is where Architecture and Landscape merge, in a Montana meadow. Within a multi-building retreat, the home literally integrates its surrounding field of grasses and wildflowers into the structure through an undulating sod roof, which in plan is evocative of a spiral. Designed using sacred geometries, this home ties to earth and fire as it wraps a Russian fireplace, and opens to the path of the sun.

The home’s materials and systems are expressive of holistic resource conservation and awareness. Built of Rastra block, which is produced from recycled polystyrene waste, the structure also utilizes other site-sourced and recycled materials such as shingles and timbers. Thermal mass walls and bancos store and disperse passive solar heat, while a wastewater recycling system sustains an adjacent constructed wetland.