- Project: Steeplechase House
- Architect: Brooks + Scarpa Architects
- Location: United States, Hillsborough, North Carolina
- Year: 2024
- Area: 445 m2
- Photography: Mark Herboth
Two Gabled Volumes Among the Trees
Nestled within a 65-acre woodland outside Hillsborough, Steeplechase House by Brooks + Scarpa reinterprets the timeless American gable into an expression of lightness, resilience, and calm. The design distills architecture to its essence—two simple volumes, a connecting glass link, and the surrounding forest—creating a home that feels both contemporary and elemental.
For the Los Angeles–based studio, long known for its commitment to sustainable design and material experimentation, Steeplechase House extends its architectural language from dense urban contexts to the quiet rhythms of rural life.
Concept and Spatial Logic
The concept is built on clarity and contrast: two steeply pitched pavilions connected by a transparent bridge that appears to float between the trees. This minimalist composition defines the home’s program and experience.
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The East Pavilion houses the social functions—living, dining, and kitchen—beneath a tall, airy ceiling lined with pale plywood.
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The West Pavilion contains the private spaces—bedrooms, bathrooms, and studio—organized along an axial spine.
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The Glass Link acts as a transitional threshold, its transparency turning the daily act of crossing between volumes into a meditation on light, reflection, and the forest beyond.
From a distance, the forms read as quiet silhouettes: archetypal houses abstracted to their pure geometry.
Architecture of Reflection
Steeplechase House is defined by its duality: opacity and transparency, weight and levity. The dark, reflective exterior—clad in blackened metal and mirror-like glass—mirrors the canopy and sky, allowing the house to visually dissolve into its surroundings. As daylight shifts, so too does the building’s appearance, from crisp solid to ghostly reflection.
Inside, the experience reverses: warm plywood, soft daylight, and a restrained material palette create an atmosphere of intimacy and tactility. The interiors feel monastic yet generous, where light becomes the primary ornament.
Material and Craft
The home’s materials were chosen for their durability, thermal efficiency, and sensory depth:
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Exterior: standing-seam black metal cladding and high-performance reflective glazing.
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Interior: continuous birch plywood lining with concealed joints and integrated storage.
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Floors: polished concrete for thermal mass and radiant heating.
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Roof: insulated assembly with solar-ready infrastructure.
The precision of detailing—a Brooks + Scarpa hallmark—creates a sense of seamlessness; structure, enclosure, and surface feel like one continuous gesture.
Climate, Performance, and Resilience
Although visually minimal, the building’s performance is advanced. Passive solar orientation, cross ventilation, and high-efficiency envelope design reduce the home’s energy demand dramatically.
Key performance metrics include:
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EUI: 25.5 (versus 44 baseline for comparable houses).
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Lighting power density: 0.28 W/sqft.
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Envelope: optimized for airtightness with operable glazing for natural airflow.
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Structure: steel frame with high-recycled-content panels and FSC-certified timber.
Brooks + Scarpa integrated passive survivability principles, ensuring that the home remains comfortable during power outages through daylight, ventilation, and thermal buffering.
Landscape as Architecture
The house stands at the center of a 20-acre native reforestation zone, part of a larger 65-acre property undergoing ecological restoration. Formerly degraded farmland is now replanted with native grasses, redbuds, and pollinator species, turning the residence into a participant in environmental healing rather than an imposition on the land.
Paths meander through meadow-like clearings, connecting architecture, landscape, and the daily rituals of walking, working, and contemplation.
Light, Silence, and the Everyday
Steeplechase House is not a statement of wealth or status—it is a meditation on essentials.
Light filters through clerestory gaps, grazing the plywood ceilings. Shadows trace across the interior throughout the day. At night, the house becomes a lantern in the woods, reflecting fireflies and starlight across the glass façade.
It’s a building that doesn’t compete with its setting; it listens to it. In doing so, it exemplifies Brooks + Scarpa’s broader vision of sustainable luxury—architecture stripped to purpose and poetry.
A Contemporary American Archetype
With its paired pavilions and reflective skin, Steeplechase House reinvigorates the rural American archetype for the 21st century. It’s both shelter and instrument, balancing technology with timeless craft, high performance with emotional resonance.
Brooks + Scarpa’s work here stands as a quiet manifesto: architecture that embraces reduction, amplifies nature, and endures through simplicity.
