Step through the front door of this Harding Huebner–designed mountain house, and you might still feel like you’re outside. Through a glass wall in the entrance hall you can see the ferns and boulders that fringe a terrace and firepit at the center of this U-shaped house. Enclosed by a sassafras-clad great room and two board-formed concrete wings, the courtyard’s fourth side dematerializes in a forested hillside. This protective outdoor living space is where the owners and their large family spend much of their time, enjoying the views through the house and the reflections of light and trees on glass.
The clients, California transplants seeking a place to retire far from the West’s recurring wildfires, asked Harding Huebner to help them select a piece of land with a view in rural North Carolina. The 3.6-acre parcel sits near the top of a mountain in an enclave about 15 minutes from downtown Asheville. “Like many folks in this area, they were looking for a place that was private and rural but close to town,” says Chad Harding, AIA. “A lot of the mountain sites are very steep, but this one is not. It is near the crown of a mountain, with nice exposure to winds rolling over the property, which helps with bugs and extends the outdoor living season. We had a lot of opportunity to explore connections to the land; it’s not just about the view and everything facing in one direction.”
In addition to their desire to be part of a mountain community, the empty nesters wanted a full-time house that felt comfortable for just the two of them but that could expand effortlessly for family gatherings. Chad responded by designing a great room whose metal roof tips up to the north, echoing the slope of the land. “We wanted to diminish the overall presence of the house from below,” he says. “We put in high clerestory glass that allows the roof to open to the tree canopy to the north—a real priority of the clients was to connect back to the land.”
This open living space connects a pair of lower-pitched volumes: a garage and entryway on the east that’s partially buried in the hillside, and a primary suite on the west. “We shaped the home to be a reverse U going back into the grade to create this courtyard with the forest behind you,” Chad says. “The U creates an internal, more intimate courtyard, and the shape of the house creates a buffer from the harsher winter winds.”
The resulting floor plan offers the convenience of one-level living for the couple but also plenty of space for both sociability and privacy when company arrives. Visitors can spill out to the central courtyard or a deck with a fireplace off the living room. The walk-out lower level accommodates overnight guests with three bedrooms and two baths, a lounge, and a gravel patio.
Partially cantilevering from the west side of the great room, the expansive deck further engages the potential of the site. “The great room bar has some views through an opening in the trees to the distant valley but a really nice foreground view of the upper canopy of trees,” Chad says. “Rather than having a deck right in front of the glass, we pushed it off to the far west side of the plan and cantilevered it to a more specific opening to the view, so the great room experience felt uninterrupted.”
Tough Materials
Another challenge the design addresses is the site’s exposure to high winds. The great room’s floating roof consists of two exposed high and low beams running the length of the volume. A pair of splayed columns marks the center point of the house and expresses how the two beams are spliced together at the roofline, stiffening the frame and tying the assembly together. “The client had never lived in a Modern house. He has a strong passion for Modernism and loves the expression and use of steel in industrial structures,” Chad says.
Beyond the steel accents and concrete wings, the house’s mix of warm, durable materials helped allay the wife’s concern that a Modernist house would feel cold. Taking cues from the tones of the surrounding forest, they selected regional white oak for the floors, ceilings, and cabinetry. Dark-stained native sassafras wood on the great room exterior is intermittently present inside: the exterior cladding is visible in the glass bridge’s passage to the primary suite, the fireplace wall is clad in steel and sassafras, and some of the built-in cabinets have sassafras niches. The kitchen’s blackened steel backsplash echoes the steel on the fireplace, and gray quartz countertops complement the concrete fireplace hearth.
Wood ceiling planes continue outside as soffits, where southern yellow pine was employed to rebuff both weather and wood-eating insects. “We can get big weather systems and horizontal rain,” Chad says. “In our mixed climate with lots of moisture and mildew, we love to create harder, more weather-resilient finishes and applications on the edges of buildings and bring the warmer underbelly of materials farther in from the edges.” Indeed, almost no part of the country is immune to extreme weather events—a reality that hit home recently when flooding from Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc in and around downtown Asheville, which sits in a bowl of mountainous terrain.
Holding Court
Of course, the house itself protects the central courtyard, which is designed to look both inward and outward. Pocketing glass doors in the great room create a 21-foot-wide opening to the courtyard, whose concrete paving, wild edges, and local boulders help it feel rooted in place. “The boulders were from a stone yard a half mile from the project,” Chad says. “We found rocks that matched what was on site and situated them to feel like we were building the house around them.” With the land behind the house dipping down into the courtyard and then under the glass link between the great room and primary suite, the boulders help to define the courtyard’s edges.
The team did as little clearing to the tree canopy as possible and tried to avoid disturbing the land around the house, which created challenges for crane access, foundation work, and staging the building. “We started from the primary suite side, then built the great room, then the garage was the last thing to come together,” Chad says. “We had to find the right boulders and set them into the courtyard way early, because once we closed in the building, we couldn’t move them around.” The poured-concrete paving segments cantilever slightly above the fern beds, creating a shadow line.
Although they’re on the opposite coast from their previous residence, the clients feel right at home here. “The wife, an avid hiker, said the only problem with the house is that it makes her feel less inclined to go out because she’s in the landscape all day long,” Chad says, adding that she loves watching the fog come over the mountain, “and then the views cracking open.” She can feel the weather patterns passing right through the house. “That’s exactly what we were going for,” he says. “It’s a real compliment to know that she feels that connection to the landscape.”
Southcliff Residence
Asheville, North Carolina
Architect: Chad Harding, AIA, principal, Harding Huebner, Asheville, North Carolina
Builder: Jade Mountain Builders, Asheville
Interior designer: Brooke Kern Interior Design, Asheville
Landscape architect: Rob Dull, Sitework Studios, Asheville
Structural engineer: Lysaght & Associates, Raleigh, North Carolina
Project size: 4,300 square feet
Site size: 3.6 acres
Construction cost: Withheld
Photography: Keith Isaacs Photography
Key Products
Cabinetry: Custom Living Quarters, Fletcher
Cladding: Sassafras, blackened steel
Cooking vent hood: Zephyr
Cooktop: Wolf Induction
Custom concrete hearth: Hardcore Concrete Designs
Custom Furniture: KERR Woodworking
Custom pivot entry door: Loud Woodwork
Decorative steel: OK Goods, Traveler’s Rest, North Carolina
Dishwasher: Bosch
Faucets: Grohe, Delta
HVAC systems: WaterFurnace geothermal
Interior doors: Emtek
Lighting control: Lutron
Outdoor grill: Coyote
Outdoor refrigerator: Uline
Ovens: Wolf
Photovoltaics: Sugar Hollow Solar
Refrigerator: Sub-Zero
Roofing: MRS Roofing Systems
Sinks: Elkay, Kohler, Signature Hardware
Solar panels: Sugar Hollow Solar
Toilets: Duravit
Tub: Duravit
Underlayment, sheathing: Huber Engineered Woods ZIP System
Vanities and pedestal lavs: Kohler Mendota
Washer/dryer: Whirlpool
Window shading systems: Lutron
Windows: Lincoln Windows
Window wall systems: Kolbe VistaLuxe AL LINE, Lincoln Doors
Wine refrigerator: U-Line