Wilson Creek House

How does one design a home for their parents?

What if this new home replaces the old home in which you grew up?

All those aspects of childhood, of playing in the creek, how can you apply that knowledge to not only the architecture, but the parts that flow and change with the season: parents are aging, the site itself growing more intertwined with memory. Suddenly that past memory is altered by a present experience in the same place.

This was a very important project because it brought my whole family together: humans, designers, builders, brother, sister; a family unit tied into a life goal of building a new residence for everyone to enjoy.

It also takes place in an area of Montana that is now as much a name in my life as it is a place within society. That was perhaps the most challenging aspect of returning to a place I haven’t spent time beyond a holiday since I turned 18. Do I really know what architecture is here? In that sense it mandated I focus on the core element of the site, its relationship to us as a family and the beautiful and tectonic natural forms of life and ecology I grew up with. If you can understand something that you were surrounded by as you were formed unaware, that knowledge is outside of language as much as it is outside of architecture. It exists at a core level of being. If you can form an understanding out of that nucleus, everything else will flow outward.

ARCHITECT: Metonym Architecture, LLC

CONTRACTOR: Trademark Construction, INC

STRUCTURAL ENGINEER: Hicks Engineering, PC

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: Field Studio

ELEC / LIGHTING ENGINEER: Beartooth Lighting Design, PLLC