The Guilford Sound recording and production campus in Guilford, Vermont serves as a site for local and visiting artists and musicians to develop projects—both individually and with members of the Southern Vermont community. This five-bedroom residence allows artists to reside on the rural campus, within walking distance of the organization’s state of the art recording studio. The project is embedded into a gently sloping, south-facing hillside with views of the Ashworth valley and distant foothills of the Green Mountains.

A fully vegetated roof flows seamlessly into the field grasses on the hillside and an exterior stair, open to the sky slices through the building encouraging residents to walk up and explore the upper reaches of the surrounding site.  The project is designed to meet International Passiv Haus (Passive House) standards and to achieve LEED Silver certification. These efforts will result in very low energy use for heating and cooling and a high level of interior comfort and air quality with temperature and humidity stabilized using the thermal mass of the structure and the hygroscopic buffering of a dense-pack cellulose insulation envelope.

Clad entirely in ¼” thick steel plate rainscreen, sandblasted and left to oxidize naturally on site, the exterior has a variegated appearance with different coloration and texture from plate to plate.  Inside, the sleeping rooms are connected by a single hallway illuminated by a clerestory window above and a continuous backlit chalkboard designed to be used as tool for collaboration and a shared space for messages and notes.