“The Mask House in Ithaca, N.Y., designed by WOJR, envisions a secluded sanctuary that serves as a place of separation.
Hidden behind a screen of vertical slats and perched on stilts over a lakeside slope, the house is just 587 square feet and includes a large open room with a small kitchen to one side, an economical bathroom, and a small bed tucked into a skylit cubby” from Residential Architect Design Award.
Mask House provides a place of refuge and contemplation for one who lost his younger brother in the lake that the house will overlook.
It is conceptualized as a space comprised of myriad sanctuaries—within the context of this project sanctuary is a place of separation and protection that removes one from the world of the everyday and offers passage to an other world.
The transition from everyday to other is drawn-out through a series of thresholds that define a scalar sequence of nested interiors—each interior becoming successively more removed from one world and more connected to the next.
The vertical plane of the mask establishes a boundary across the site that creates a condition of sidedness.
Mask House endeavors to provide one in search of sanctuary an abundance of opportunities to find refuge within new interiors in dialogue with the surrounding environment. Source by WOJR – Organization for Architecture.
- Location: Ithaca, USA
- Architects: WOJR – Organization for Architecture
- Project Team: William O’Brien Jr., John David Todd, Gabrielle Piazza Patawaran, Justin Gallagher, Kian Hiu Lan Yam, Joey Swerdlin
- Visualization: Alexis Nicolas Basso
- Area: 587 Square Feet
- Status: 2013-Ongoing
- Photographs: Courtesy of WOJR – Organization for Architecture
