Students at Duniway Middle School in McMinnville, Oregon are planting seeds and harvesting life skills with help from New Energy Works who will contribute a covered timber frame structure to their new garden.
This legacy cabin is located on a large parcel of land at the end of a winding forest road in Oregon. Surrounded by thick strands Douglas Fir, and right near the coast, the structure is a classic pacific northwest cabin.
The homeowners are true Oregonians, with a woodshop on the property and a hankering to keep everything as true to the landscape as possible. Including the timber used in the frame.
Rendering by New Energy Works
David Shirley, AIA, the architect on the cabin explains, “the family has such a connection with the land. The homeowner is a burly woodsman, and he cut all of the trees for the home. You just know that when they look up and see all of those timbers every morning they can say, ‘These are our timbers, this is our house.’”
“We toured their existing home,” continues Shirley. “I love getting to visit houses people live in because it’s a good opportunity to say, ‘Hey, what do you love about how you live, what are your usage patterns, what’s your favorite thing about this house? What would you change, what don’t you like?’”
“What they said to us was, ‘We really like this house but its really old and needs to be replaced’. They liked a lot about their cabin, where it was, where it sat, and they said, ‘We are going to demo this thing, and we are going to save as much as we can of the existing house as far as the details go.’ I walked away thinking about their needs and wants and put together an initial design. After a few changes we started to move forward.”
The vision for the home was a hybrid timber frame, as heavy timber was an absolute must for the client.
“Because 16’ was the max length of timber the homeowner could harvest, we designed everything in the cabin to that specification. And we only took the design of the house so far,” says Shirley. “The homeowner wanted to craft the details. So, we left space for him to put his stamp on the blank timber canvas.”
