![Mask House](https://aasarchitecture.com/wp-content/uploads/Mask-House-by-WOJR-01.jpg)
“The Mask House in Ithaca, N.Y., designed by WOJR, envisions a secluded sanctuary that serves as a place of separation.
![Mask House](https://aasarchitecture.com/wp-content/uploads/Mask-House-by-WOJR-02.jpg)
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](https://aasarchitecture.com/wp-content/uploads/Mask-House-by-WOJR-03.jpg)
Mask House provides a place of refuge and contemplation for one who lost his younger brother in the lake that the house will overlook.
![Mask House](https://aasarchitecture.com/wp-content/uploads/Mask-House-by-WOJR-04.jpg)
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.
![Mask House](https://aasarchitecture.com/wp-content/uploads/Mask-House-by-WOJR-05.jpg)
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.
![Mask House](https://aasarchitecture.com/wp-content/uploads/Mask-House-by-WOJR-06.jpg)
The vertical plane of the mask establishes a boundary across the site that creates a condition of sidedness.
![Mask House](https://aasarchitecture.com/wp-content/uploads/Mask-House-by-WOJR-07.jpg)
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.
![Mask House](https://aasarchitecture.com/wp-content/uploads/Mask-House-by-WOJR-08.jpg)
- 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
![Mask House](https://aasarchitecture.com/wp-content/uploads/Mask-House-by-WOJR-09.jpg)
![Mask House](https://aasarchitecture.com/wp-content/uploads/Mask-House-by-WOJR-10.jpg)