Single-Family Home

A Cedar-Clad Cubic Getaway Turns Constraint Into Character

When FORMA principals and business partners Miroslava Brooks and Daniel Markiewicz set out to design a remote getaway in Upstate New York, they envisioned a shared vacation home that could accommodate both of their families. Turning to conventional light-frame wood construction, they created a striking, unconventional retreat on a 9-acre wooded site in Hillsdale, New York. The 1,475-square-foot home stacks living spaces vertically within a compact footprint, while its geometric form creates a deliberate counterpoint to the landscape. The dark cedar-clad volume reads as both weekend dwelling and sculptural object, while shifting siding orientations, a natural cedar-lined porch, and warm interior pine and maple finishes make wood central to its expression.

A Compact Response
to Site and Cost

The project began in 2020, when Brooks and Markiewicz purchased the naturally wooded property with a clearing at the crest of a gentle hill. From the beginning, the site shaped the design. The house was positioned to take advantage of views in two directions: toward a pond and the Berkshires to the east, and toward the Catskills to the west.

“It’s a beautiful piece of land, and from the outset, we knew we wanted to put the house right on top of the hill to maximize views and, with no trees to take down, lessen its environmental impact,” Markiewicz says. “And then, to even further take advantage of the views while keeping its footprint small, we knew we wanted to go vertical.”

Constructed during the pandemic, when costs were climbing and labor was scarce, the home’s compact configuration and use of standard light-frame wood construction helped keep the project straightforward to build and within a modest budget.

The design duo went through several evolutions before arriving at the final scheme. “Reaching the project’s final design was a gradual and evolving process,” Markiewicz says. “We tested different options to keep the footprint compact, maximize the views, and create flexibility for different groups to use the house. It was also about finding the right local contractor and understanding what was possible within our budget.”

For Brooks, the limitations were not simply obstacles to overcome, they became part of the architecture. “Starting with a certain set of constraints is always great because it pushes you to be more deliberate and do something that you would not otherwise do,” she says.

The result is a house that makes the most of its compact vertical volume—not one square foot wasted. It’s a bold design move that reduced excavation and foundation work while lifting the main living areas to capture light and views. It also gave the house its distinct sculptural character. What began as a resourceful way to organize bedrooms, bathrooms, stairs, and shared living space within a tight volume became the basis for the home’s distinctive exterior expression: a dark cedar cube raised on the hilltop, at once sculptural but still attuned to its surroundings.

“It was an intent from the very beginning that it’s going to be an object,” Brooks says. Rather than embedding the house into the slope or stretching it across the clearing, the architects chose to let it stand apart from the landscape while reconnecting it to the wooded site through materiality, orientation, geometry, and views. “Through the use of wood and through visual connections and where openings are,” Brooks says, “you connect the dwelling back to the environment.”

Conventional Framing,
Unconventional Form

Although House on a Hill has the presence of a sculptural object, it is achieved with mostly off-the-shelf lumber and standard wood construction. Early in the process, the architects considered other wood systems, including cross-laminated timber and prefabrication. But for a modest house in a rural location, those approaches quickly became less practical.

“It uses standard stick framing,” Markiewicz says, “but we do use some 6×6 rather than your standard 2×6 framing. These heavier members support the home’s tall volume, wind loads, and large openings.”

On the exterior, cedar cladding unifies the house as a singular volume while emphasizing its shifting geometry. The siding changes direction across the facades: Vertical boards reinforce the grounded west side, while diagonal boards on the east side follow the lifted geometry of the angled supports. The majority of the exterior cedar is stained dark while still reading as natural wood. “We wanted to let the grain of the siding show through,” Markiewicz says.

Trapezoidal cutouts on three sides of the home echo the pentagonal windows above the porch, extending the home’s geometric language across the facade. The smaller north and south openings frame more intimate views, while the larger eastern opening captures the site’s most dramatic view of the Berkshires and the western exposure looks toward the Catskills. Inside the open-air porch carved out at the ground level, the cedar cladding is left natural, creating a warmer threshold between house and site. “We wanted to articulate the outside as a kind of darker object and have that warm exterior deck inside the project,” Markiewicz says. The space also served a practical purpose during construction: The architects left the porch as an open concrete slab until the end to protect the wood finish from foot traffic. “It was a great work area for them,” Brooks says, noting that the sheltered space gave contractors a place to cut wood and store materials when it rained.

Inside, the dark exterior gives way to a lighter palette of engineered oak flooring, maple plywood paneling, and pine window frames and trim. The layout became what Brooks describes as a three-dimensional puzzle. “From the earlier stages, the cube volume was almost established,” she says. “And so it was really thinking more about a 3D puzzle, what can you actually put in that cube in the most efficient way, but without losing the spaciousness of that collective space.”

The three-bedroom, three-bathroom house is organized across three levels, with private rooms, bathrooms, stairs, and service spaces consolidated along one side of the compact volume. Three ensuite bedrooms are stacked for privacy and flexibility, allowing the retreat to be used by the co-owners, two families, groups of friends, or solo visitors with a degree of autonomy.

“Being able to use it together and with other friends, that kind of flexibility ultimately drove the decisions to have the three ensuite bedrooms,” Markiewicz says. The second floor pairs the main living area with an ensuite bedroom, while expansive windows open the house toward the pond and the Berkshires beyond. There, the double-height living and dining space becomes the social center of the plan, with a fireplace and cast-iron wood stove set within custom millwork, creating a pivot point between kitchen, dining, and living spaces. Stacking the bathrooms helped simplify plumbing runs, while lifting the shared living space above the ground gave the compact house a greater sense of openness and connection to the landscape.

All in all, the self-imposed limitations for the project pushed the duo towards a better, more optimized approach. “The constraints made for a better design. When you minimize something on one end, we actually try to maximize something on the other,” Brooks says. “The final design felt less like a compromise than an inevitability. After so many iterations, you confirm to yourself: ‘This is it! This is the best solution!’”