Allandale House is a minimal version of the forest cabin based on an extruded A-frame. The Allandale House also provides space for an eccentric collection of artifacts that resist straightforward classification. Wines, rare books, stuffed birds and an elk mount are among the relics on display in this small vacation house.

The house links three horizontal extrusions of asymmetrical A-frames: the western side contains the library, wine cellar and garage. In the centre lay two floors of bedrooms and bathrooms. On the Eastern side, a medium A-frame holds the living, kitchen and dining areas. The medium A-frame on the eastern side consists of living, kitchen and dining areas. The house aims to undermine the seeming limitations of a triangular section by augmenting and revealing the extreme proportion in the vertical direction, and utilizing the acutely angled corners meeting the floor as moments for thickened walls, telescopic apertures and built-in storage.

William O’Brien Jr. is Assistant Professor of Architecture at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning and is principal of an independent design practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His research and creative practice have been fostered by an interest in the relationships between architecture, technology, landscape, and urbanism with an emphasis on the development of alternative resonances between natural and artificial systems.

Renderings: Peter Guthrie