Esplumoir House

1981 HInesburg, VT
980 sf, 2 br house
Principal: Michael Wisniewski        

Esplumoir is archaic french - according to C.G.Jung in Memories, Dreams & Reflections - for a  place where falcons moult:  A place of transformation.  This little structure was our first house, where the boys were born, where Laura still lives and has continued to transform following her own path.

The roof form appeared, seemingly from  nowhere until I found a picture of the house I grew up in with the same roof and realized memory was reasserting place (or myth)  across time.

The sloped site suggested a series of terraces flowing down to the stream, so the floor was treated as several planes stepping down in the inside.  Portions of the ceiling gypsum board were peeled away to reveal structure and create a sense of another plane hovering above.  The ceiling plane and two columns are an abstraction of the dining room canopy that Sir John Soane created in his own house.