Stepping House

This publication presents an architectural exploration of how the qualities of a dramatic landscape can be captured, deployed, and mediated to create an informal social environment. A method was developed to remake the landscape as a series of platforms in the hillside that step up through the building following the contours of the site. Thus a micro landscape is created within the building and movement through the house becomes a journey across this landscape of platforms. This journey is made memorable by giving each of these platforms a different orientation and relationship to the surrounding landscape which selectively amplifies or mediates the qualities of the sites typography, scenography and materiality. It also resulted in open and continuous social areas and outdoor areas conducive to social interaction and the inhabitation of a cultivated landscape.