Architecture informed by lifestyle—designing houses in the Pacific Northwest
Houses are more than a collection of rooms, a floor, and a roof—they represent the essence of the people who inhabit them and the place where they are built. This design philosophy is fundamental to how Scott Edwards Architecture approaches designing homes. Houses are specific to our client, to the site, and to the larger regional context, both in terms of sustainability and aesthetic. And while the homes are each unique, they all start from the same place—a curated design process driven by our client’s vision and a deep understanding of the project site. When selecting us as their architect, clients can expect not only a beautiful home but a responsive space that facilitates their particular lifestyle.
Attentiveness and observation lie at the core of our creativity. Close collaboration with clients allows us to align their big-picture needs and idyllic wants with small details they may never have considered. Understanding our clients' aspirations for how they see themselves living directly informs how we design their homes. This approach is particularly resonant here in the Pacific Northwest, a place rich with outdoor recreation and people with artistic pursuits. It is not uncommon for us to integrate art studios, micro-wineries, and outdoor pastimes into houses, not only accommodating but further cultivating opportunities to engage with these activities in daily life. Our designs aim to remove barriers to our clients pursuing their passions.
We frequently design houses for clients with active lifestyles and often incorporate spaces to support their pursuits. Our Slabtown 4 residence (left) has a deck for practicing yoga, and our Gig Harbor residence (right) wraps around a lap pool.
It is not uncommon for us to integrate art studios, micro-wineries, and outdoor pastimes into houses, not only accommodating but further cultivating opportunities to engage with these activities in daily life.
An exciting part of the process is when we learn what these passions are and begin thinking about how we will incorporate them into the house’s design. For a client who is a guitar enthusiast, we created a room with a heightened level of acoustic separation and custom casework to display an extensive album collection for them to enjoy playing and listening to music. In another house, we designed a secret door behind a cabinet that leads to a whiskey room, a response to our client’s enjoyment of entertaining and whimsy (and whiskey). For specific spaces like these and our overall understanding of their lifestyle, discovering our client’s ideal balance between areas for entertaining and areas of reprieve is a conversation we like to have early. This balance informs how all the pieces come together.
In our Glass Link house, a hidden whiskey room can only be accessed through a secret latch in a cabinet.
Our houses also break down the boundary between indoor and outdoor living. Residing in the Pacific Northwest means being surrounded by breathtaking landscapes, abundant greenery, and rugged terrain, and when clients choose to live here, we understand that this is part of the reason. We take pride in creating homes that seamlessly integrate with the natural surroundings and are truly of their place. Every site is different and the home’s orientation within the site is one of the first decisions clients will make with our designers. This decision considers access to views and outdoor living spaces, programming and important adjacencies, sustainability, weather, and more. Site differences also help shape the house's forms, leading to distinctive architectural solutions that intentionally shield, expose, stack, and cantilever.
In a dramatic move to maximize the view from the most public rooms of the Five Peaks Lookout home, the living and dining spaces are cantilevered out over a steep drop, looking out to a 270-degree view of the site and all five mountain peaks.
While each Scott Edwards Architecture-designed house is different, there are recurring elements derived from a shared vernacular. Our design choices reflect our commitment to using restrained, timeless palettes of locally-sourced and sustainable materials, ensuring that each residence is firmly rooted in the region's aesthetic heritage. Whether it's the warm hues of regionally-sourced timber, the grounding quality of local stone, or the extensive use of glass to invite the outdoors in, we pay homage to the Pacific Northwest's intrinsic beauty.
Our Glass Link house is restrained and simple, with a limited palette of materials including wood, steel, stone, and glass that connect the residence to its site in the hills outside downtown Portland, Oregon.
Our design choices reflect our commitment to using restrained, timeless palettes of locally-sourced and sustainable materials, ensuring that each residence is firmly rooted in the region's aesthetic heritage.
Environmental stewardship further expresses our appreciation of this place—enjoying it is dependent upon protecting it. A commitment to sustainability, whether integrating various green building systems, or simply making use of good design fundamentals like shading and solar orientation, ensures that the houses we create with our clients are good neighbors to the region we live in. Sustainable strategies are incorporated in a manner that adds character and further assimilates the house into the landscape—this can mean nestling a home into a hillside to help regulate temperature, adding a green roof terrace to a second-story outdoor living space, or using vertical wood slats to define exterior edges and modulate the interior’s natural light.
The Brightwood Cabin (left) is tucked into the site’s hillside and our Maple Rock house (right) uses vertical wood slats on the home’s exterior, both examples of passive sustainable design strategies.
A certain adventuresome spirit prevails in the Pacific Northwest that makes designing a house for a client here a singular experience. We craft people-driven homes that deliver a comfortable place to reside, yes, but also a way to live. Boundaries between inside and outside are blurred, the formality of closed spaces is dropped, and aspirational pursuits become attainable in day-to-day life. We have the privilege of providing unparalleled personal attention to each client that through close partnership, culminates in a house that harmoniously blends with its surroundings and creates architecture informed by lifestyle.
We craft people-driven homes that deliver a comfortable place to reside, yes, but also a way to live.
The northern façade of our Hood River Residence is almost entirely windows, providing views of Mt. Adams and the Hood River Valley. The design maximizes views unobtrusively as it blends with the surrounding landscape.
