Vipp Pavilion
Designed by Los Angeles firm Johnston Marklee Vipp Pavilion is the latest in Vipp’s global portfolio of architecturally designed guesthouses.
To be immersed in nature yet protected from the elements – like watching a pastel-coloured sky gradually go dark from a well-lit room or feeling the breeze through a window from a cosy nook – is a powerful dynamic. Achieving or facilitating this rapport is fundamental to many good pieces of architecture, and it is central to the experience of Vipp Pavilion in Upstate New York.
Located two hours north-west of Manhattan by car on nearly seven hectares of densely forested land, the site was immediately appealing to Sofie Christensen Egelund, third generation co-owner of Vipp (the granddaughter of Holger Nielsen who founded the company in Denmark in 1939).
“We were immediately drawn to the natural, unspoiled landscape surrounding the site and this particular region in Upstate New York,” Christensen Egelund explains. “It is not perfectly manicured and has the kind of rugged beauty that parallels many of our other guesthouse properties.” She adds that the “wildness of the landscape sits in contrast to the more sculptural quality of the architecture, which creates a very interesting tension”.
The house is indeed arresting. Perched at the tip of a pond – the contours of which give the architecture its elliptical form – and made from stucco, timber and glass, it is a bold yet considerate gesture. Landscaping, including a meadow of native plants and a green roof conceived by Larry Weaner Landscape Associates, is highly contextual and helps to soften the edges of the built form.
Inside, the layout unfurls around a large, freestanding aluminium Vipp kitchen – its extruded profile mirroring the pavilion’s ribbed stucco exterior – and the dining and living areas sit alongside a wall of glass doors facing the pond. The ever-changing view of the water’s rippled surface, the wild meadow and vast expanse of sky plays a leading role, becoming integral to the internal experience as it changes in hue and intensity across the course of the day.
“The pavilion at once embraces the landscape and emerges discretely from it, with monolithic walls and deep shadows marking the openings.”
Floor-to-ceiling mahogany-framed windows in each of the two bedrooms and the bathroom also provide generous apertures to the surrounding landscape, as do three circular skylights. These openings bring the outdoors to the centre of the experience, no matter the time of day; at night, the meadow can be seen from the bed, lit up by the moon, and, during the day, the skylights cast oblong shadows. Architect Mark Lee says rooms “complete their forms by borrowing views from nature, uniting each space to specific features of the landscape”.
Lee’s colleague Sharon Johnston echoes this, saying that the pavilion’s curved walls and oversized windows help to draw in the views. “The pavilion at once embraces the landscape and emerges discretely from it, with monolithic walls and deep shadows marking the openings.”
She adds that during a short stay, “the interplay of building and landscape, light and shadow and architecture and interiors inspires visitors to slow down and observe changes over time, both inside and out into nature.”
An elemental palette of ochre, grey and cream is a fitting expression of Vipp’s design philosophy and Danish roots, and its own furniture, lighting and accessories dot the rooms alongside art, ceramics and objects selected by Christensen Egelund. The effect is curated yet personal, culminating in a thoughtfully designed and bookable guesthouse where the landscape may be at one’s fingertips, but so, too, are all the creature comforts of an inviting home.
