Linn Ranch

NATURE IS PERFECT. So when we design a house, looking to regionality, craft and belonging is key so that it won’t be a scar on the landscape, but instead will act as something that honors its natural surroundings.

LEFT: A stacked stone wall serves as the centerpiece of the great room. Flanked by double bronzeclad doors, access to the outdoors remains an ever present factor.

ABOVE: The balance of solid stone with the transparency of windows throughout the house conveys shelter from the elements and an inherent connection to nature. T his house’s site, with resplendent views of the mountains and dense western forest, was also once a commercial gravel pit and junkyard for old cars and farm equipment. As a result, it required extensive reclamation and stabilization. Two ponds on the property are fed by a number of underground springs, hidden tributaries of the Snake River. With the team’s vision of possibility and a series of engineering feats, stream restoration, landscape design, and architectural innovation, what emerged was a house that appears to grow from the ground, seeming as if it had always been here and will continue to stand with timeless appeal. A sophisticated plan was enacted with simple materials—timber, stone, metal, glass. What transpired was a gracious design that folds itself into the landscape. The main house seems to float over the water and wrap around its edge just as the cottonwoods, willows, and wild grasses hold to the banks. Step inside and the first view on a clear day is of the Grand Teton, inset into an arched floor-to-ceiling window framed with rice stone. The arch is a form that repeats enfilade and in the soaring timbers of the great room. Positioned as if on two islands, the central feature of the house is a connector of two wings via an interior bridge. Both sides of the bridge are walls of windows that encase a dining room that offers the best vantage of the surrounding landscape during every season of the year. Water, forest, mountains. Those pure elements were the greatest influence on the design. They inspired a relationship to the place and a desire to honor it through living. The sound of water permeates the living areas, with the kitchen window cracked on an early autumn morning or at dinner when the doors of the dining bridge are open wide. Rare, very wide, antique American chestnut wood was used throughout the house for the floors, doors, and trim. Countless relics of the past were folded into the construction, not only in the form of materials, but in the expert techniques of the craftspeople who keep traditions of the trade alive in every element they construct.

PAGES 156-157: Hershberger Design helped reclaim the property by creating an oasis within the landscape design that encompasses the house.

PAGES 158-159: The dining room acts as a bridge connecting the entryway to the great room. Bi-fold bronze-clad doors on each side of the room open to create an al fresco experience. WRJ Design selected a single slab walnut wood table from BDDW.

RIGHT: An antique armoire from Asia stands in for a coat closet and a smart plaid settee offers comfortable seating in the foyer.

PAGE 161: In a powder room simple lines prevail. Reclaimed corral board was applied vertically on the walls, the sink is made from white-veined black granite, while the mirror and sconces echo the linear space.