House in the Hills

We spent this past weekend at the beautiful weekend home of the Woo family, a masterwork of modernist architecture sequestered high in the rolling Vermont hills. Kyu Sung Woo, the paterfamilias, designed it himself, and his limpid vision and great attention to detail show everywhere. (The project may be familiar; it was recently featured in the Wall Street Journal.) The main house is comprised of a pair of light-filled, two-story bar structures, hinged at the middle. The volumes and geometries are asymmetric but have a natural sense of harmony to them. Horizontal and vertical bands in a variety of materials (blond-wood floors, green clapboard siding panels, corrugated metal) give interiors and exteriors visual energy and direct the eye into the landscape. It’s all controlled and executed with immense care and polish.