Large Home, Small Feel
The challenge was to design a 3,340-square-foot home that didn't feel like a large house. The clients wanted each room to feel like a small cabin in the landscape—intimate, connected to the outdoors, with no wasted circulation space. This drove the hashtag-shaped plan: four intersecting bars that create eight courtyards—one central and seven perimeter—eliminating hallways entirely and giving every room direct outdoor access.
Precision Fabrication
Oregon's first fully cross-laminated timber single-family home was built entirely from prefabricated CLT panels milled in Montana. The exposed CLT interior required absolute precision: every panel, window, and joint had to align perfectly on-site, leaving no room for field adjustments. The exterior cedar is torched using Shou Sugi Ban to enhance fire and rot resistance—a practical response to the wildfire site. The CLT panels use sustainably harvested wood, including beetle-killed lodgepole pine, sequestering 25 tons of carbon and avoiding 15 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
Impact
The AIA Merit Award jury noted the design "moves away from the opulence that has become common in current residential design." The project proved that prefabricated timber construction could deliver both carbon efficiency and architectural rigor—a case study in scalable sustainability for single-family housing.
Project Details
Architect: Mork Ulnes
Role: Project Architect, Design Lead
Photography: Jeremy Bitterman
Awards: 2023 AIA Merit Award
Published in: The Wall Street Journal, Dwell, Dezeen