Blueridge Mountain Home
Designed by RAAD Studio and brought to life by construction and interior design firm Gruver Cooley, this mountainside home in Virginia uses bold geometries, considered landscaping and textural elements to meld with its wooded site.
With its bold, cantilevered roofline and a floor plate that follows the form of the land, Blueridge Mountain Home balances moments of drama with a sense of overall calm. Cinematic moments begin on approach to the home, where the sweeping driveway culminates at a monolithic boulder couched below an open lightwell beside the front door. Inside, the elevated entry foyer reveals a grand stair that drops down into a double-height great room, where expansive six metre-high windows overlook an outdoor pool patio and the wooded view beyond. Bold timber posts echo the tree trunks outside, softening the boundaries between interior and exterior spaces.
For James Ramsay of RAAD Studio, the key to the project’s success is in the way the architecture unfolds out of the hillside. “The roof stays straight, while the floor drops away with the slope of the ground, making a house that really feels like a part of the landscape,” he says. “The client wanted to create a weekend house that took advantage of how beautiful the property is. By creating spaces that blur indoor and outdoor – with huge eaves and truly enormous pieces of operable glass – the land itself becomes the star.”
This sympathetic architecture allowed for the design of subterranean spaces, namely a barrel-vaulted indoor pool and spa that anchors the lower level of the home, complete with an ambient waterfall feature, sauna and steam room. Like something from a creatively designed childhood dream home, this space is connected to the primary bedroom above by a whimsical trap door. Sunlight filters through a half-moon window at one end of the pool, illuminating the arched ceiling in a moment of serenity.
Materials and landscaping allude to the home having grown from the land itself, with a stone-walled powder room appearing to have been carved from the earth, a bookshelf-lined sunken living room naturally lit by an expansive skylight, and green-roofed terraces obscuring the distinction between land and built form. River’s Edge Landscaping worked closely with RAAD Studio and Gruver Cooley to ensure the home’s surroundings were beautifully endowed with native planting and the green roofing integrated seamlessly with the architectural forms.
For lead interior designer Cathleen Gruver of Gruver Cooley, this house shows how deceptively complex contemporary architecture can be. “While the architecture reads as clean and restrained, nearly every element required a high level of detailing, coordination and precision,” she says. “Even details that appear simple, such as flush base moldings with drywall reveals, a five-foot exterior soffit, or the millwork within the sunken lounge, allowed for very little margin for error and required extensive planning and collaboration across trades. We are most proud to have taken the remarkable architectural vision created by RAAD Studio and added the final layer, turning it into a home that truly reflects the people who live there.”
