Design as a Verb - Swiss Army Knife House
First up in our Design as a Verb video series: the High Desert Modern project, aka “the Swiss Army Knife house”.
Set amid the natural beauty of Bend’s high desert, this thoughtfully designed retreat blurs the line between indoors and out. In this video, we’ll explore how sliding panels, hidden doors, and flexible walls create a home that shifts smoothly between private sanctuary and open gathering space—adapting to the rhythm of daily life, entertaining guests, and the surrounding landscape. Check out the video below!
Want to see more of this project? Visit the High Desert Modern project page, and to learn more about our design approach as Seattle Architects designing homes all around the Pacific Northwest, visit our Rural Retreats page.
Transcript
00:00:03 - High Desert Modern is a 2600 ft 3-bedroom, 2 and 1 half bath house in Bend, Oregon. The clients are a couple who saw this project as a bridge between working and retirement. They also wanted enough flexibility so that they could have privacy when they needed it either for work when they were working from home or when visitors were staying with them. So, the big idea that we had for accomplishing what the clients wanted of having a compact house and offering a lot of flexibility was thinking about the house as a kind of Swiss Army knife.
00:00:41 - We wanted the house to feel really open at times. So, we focused on three different areas. I'll just highlight these in blue. So, there's special piece right there. There's another one right here. And there's one right there. We'll go through each of those in turn. The first of the Swiss Army knife pieces in the house is between the primary suite and the main living spaces. Kind of the most private area and the most public area. So, this had a lot of functions to fulfill.
00:01:16 - We had a fireplace, a place for a flat screen TV, some storage that's facing the bedroom, and this whole block here that contains storage, TV, and fireplace. It's kind of a filter between these public and private spaces. And then a key feature is that there are these nicely detailed recessed doors that can slide out and close off one or both axes. That block kind of looks like this. And it's all very nicely paneled and detailed. This is where the pocket doors come out.
00:01:59 - So, picture this comes out like that when we want to. This is the fireplace TV area. The fireplace goes in here. And the TV, this is kind of a fun feature that there's a metal panel that slides over the TV when you're just focusing on the fire and it slides back over the fireplace when you just want to watch TV. It sort of forces you to choose a side. So that's from the living room side. And as I said, it's got some nice wood panel details. It just feels like a nice quiet block of wood that then fulfills all these functions.
00:02:40 - Here's a second little invention we had for the house, focusing on this corner. This was to be kind of a getaway space. Most of the time, a den, something like that, but they wanted to have guests over and give them privacy. The question was, how can we make this feel really open most of the time and private when it needed to be? So, the little invention was recessing this big door into the wall so that it kind of disappeared when you wanted it to and when you wanted to close it off, they could close it off.
00:03:17 - So, this door pockets in there and then it can be hinged. It's just got a pivot hinge there and it closes off the hall. And when it's closed, it's just a wood wall that's continuous with the end of the kitchen island. So, it's a small move. It takes some nice craftsmanship. And it again, it gives you that added function. So, a third element in the design that we invented was the opening to this courtyard.
00:03:57 - Picture this beautiful courtyard. A kind of miniature natural landscape that's sheltered from there's a lot of wind here. There's a lot of glass here. So, how do we make the most of that opening and get a lot of flexibility out of it? We did kind of a combo of a couple things. There's a hinge door here and then there's a sliding panel here. And both are detailed so that they blend with the house when they're not in use.
00:04:34 - They wanted to be able to lock the house up and have that swing door close and the panel close tight when they go away or they go to bed. They also wanted it to be easy to come and go. So, here's that door, the regular swing door that swings back. And the nice detailing here is that it's got a pocket so that when it's folded back, it doesn't look like a door anymore. It just looks like it's part of the wall.
00:05:07 - I thought I would wrap it up by flipping through. This is a scrapbook that we keep for each project. And I think what it shows is how closely involved clients are with the process of designing and construction. I think that's important for a couple of reasons. One is it's much more personal. I think it's much more fun for the clients. And it gives us the opportunity to be inventive in ways that matter.