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It’s a proven fact that engaging your senses in surroundings derived from nature brings relaxation and rejuvenation. No wonder people are designing their cabins, cottages and lake homes with rustic components.
Being drawn to rustic design is only natural – it makes you feel like you’re one with nature. Rustic design runs the gamut from traditional – where going out on a limb can be literal, to contemporary – with clean flowing lines. From one-room cabins to 10,000-square-foot ski chalets, rustically designed structures come in all shapes and sizes. What they all share, though, is a connection with the landscape. Through natural building materials, like wood and stone, the Great Outdoors is embodied and brought inside.
Rustic Roots
Rustic has its roots in the Adirondack Great Camps of upstate New York. These Gilded Age retreats of science and industry’s movers and shakers were no more “camps” than their Newport cousins were “cottages.” Set on remote lakeshores (some are still accessible only by boat or dirt road), these retreats had year-round staff and modern conveniences like gaslights and running water.
Well-known Sagamore Lodge, built in 1897 and now a conference center, had a covered open-air bowling alley installed in 1914, which is still in use today. Covered walkways linked the main lodge with sleeping cabins and the dining hall. Still, these compounds tread lightly on the land. Instead of excavated foundations, point footings let camps “roll with the hills,” says architectural historian Wesley Haynes. Following natural contours maximized views and cross-ventilation.
The Great Camps blended into the forest with their bark-on log construction. Brown was the predominant color accented with hunter green and red. Shingled roofs with deep overhangs, stonework, twig mosaic embellishments and wraparound porches defined the Adirondack style. “The porch was as much a central part of the living environment as the interior,” adds Haynes.
Here, dynastic families like the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers andNew West architecture is a contemporary remake of rustic – mixing material palettes such as steel and concrete with timber and stone. “A lot of our clients don’t want the vernacular historical approach,” says Larry Yaw of CCY Architects in Basalt, Colo. “Their tastes are contemporary. They have different aesthetic preferences.” While new energy sources – passive solar, photovoltaic cells and wind power – shape abstract building forms, regional materials tie the cabin to the site. Use of native woods and stone – such as argillite for lodges in Montana, cedar for cabins in Texas and granite for California and New York cabins – provides a natural sense of place for the getaway. “We’re creating more seamless thresholds between indoor and outdoor living spaces, which is just as important as the Great Room,” says Yaw.
At elevations of 9,000 feet, the mountain environment becomes a design issue. Snow and ultraviolet rays deteriorate wood at a rapid rate. So Yaw steers clients toward stone or corrugated metal at foundation level, reserving cedar for more sheltered spots. “Sometimes we won’t even use wood.” With rain and snow sometimes arriving horizontally with the wind, overhangs are a common feature to protect both exterior and interior. Additionally, Yaw recommends a non-combustible metal or zinc roof, which can prevent wildfire from destroying a cabin.
Not only has contemporary rustic design taken advantage of more modern materials, it has lightened up since pioneer times. Expanses of thermal-pane glass allow in more daylight, turning interiors bright and airy. Today’s rustic cabins are well heated, insulated and sound-proofed. Still, there are lessons to learn from the past. “People today want the spectacular view, so they get up on a promontory,” says Haynes. “But if you’re trying to capture the feeling of a 19th century cabin, put it in a place that makes sense for natural comfort – shade in summer, good solar gain in winter, protection from winds.”
Whether you are building new or wanting to give your place a rustic touch, the best building blocks are the ones native to your neck of the woods. For rustic-chic interior design ideas you can use for your getaway, click here.
Fran Sigurdsson enjoys the rustic life at her home in the Adirondacks.
Resource: Ann O’Leary, designer, author of “Rustic Revisited” and owner of Evergreen House Interiors in Lake Placid, N.Y.
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