Desai Chia crowns Chatham Residence with oak-leaf roof

Desai Chia Architecture has completed Chatham Residence, a single-level rural house in Chatham, Columbia County, New York, whose sculptural metal roof takes its form from native oak leaves.

The Manhattan-based studio designed the house for a couple with grown children who wanted a place to lead "a new life away from New York City". The property covers 80 acres (32 hectares) near the Catskill Mountains, on a crest surrounded by rolling, tree-covered hills and meadows.

The design began with close observation of the site. "Much of the understorey was still clear, allowing tree trunks to extend skyward like columns," the studio said. "The shadows cast by the leafy canopy revealed arcs of light and shadow that playfully shifted with the sunlight."

Those observations shaped the building's defining gesture: a curving roof with deep overhangs. "The roof was inspired by native oak leaves," the team said. "Curved overhangs provide shade and protection from the elements while also casting shadows that mimic nature."

The exterior pairs corrugated metal siding with plain-sawn accoya wood, used for soffits and covered seating areas. The studio chose the metal for its duality, describing it as "a rugged material frequently used in contemporary farm buildings, as well as an elegant surface that captures light with minimalist precision". The siding reads, in the team's words, "as a continuous ripple that traces the curved shapes".

Inside, the central zone holds the kitchen, dining area and living room. Curved corners soften the transition between walls and a vaulted ceiling, forming what the studio calls "a cloud of luminosity". Floor-to-ceiling glass opens the rooms to the terrain. "The clients enjoy views from the forest understorey to the tree canopy to the sky," the studio said.

Two wings flank the social core: one contains the primary bedroom, the other additional bedrooms. Daylight also enters through what the team describes as "hidden" clerestory windows in the primary bathroom and entry hall.

Beyond the main house, the project includes a detached guesthouse holding the couple's home office. This "sister building" repeats the corrugated metal siding and curved overhangs, and large sliding doors connect its interior to a pool terrace.

Desai Chia also designed a greenhouse and barn in collaboration with Rimol Greenhouses, a New Hampshire-based company. The polycarbonate-walled structures absorb sunlight by day and "glow like lanterns at night", according to the studio.

The landscape plan frames a pathway to a natural pond with grazing pastures for sheep, goats, miniature donkeys and other animals.

The clients commissioned the project as a second home but intend to live there full-time. They have already begun raising animals and growing plants in the greenhouse. "What began as an escape from the city has become the start of a second act," the team said.

The project team includes Gilsanz Murray Steficek Structural Engineers, mechanical engineers CES, Eileen Pierce Lighting Studio, Wagner Hodgson Landscape Architects, civil engineers Crawford Associates, general contractor Structureworks, Elephants Custom Furniture for millwork and art advisor Amy Snyder. Paul Warchol photographed the building.

Chatham Residence extends a body of upstate work by Desai Chia that includes a charred-wood house on a secluded New York island and a multi-structure Connecticut dwelling with courtyards for exhibiting artwork — projects that confirm the studio's focus on buildings shaped directly by their sites.