Thicket Studio

The client, a wool artisan, wanted a rural studio where she could process and dye wool, hold craft workshops, and one which could equally function as a one-room living space – another form of studio. The site, one of the last wild lots along an oceanside bluff south of Lunenburg, is set in rolling terrain facing onto a protected wetland and lagoon. The bluff had traditionally been a sheep pasture itself. The striking beauty of the location has more recently led to its subdivision and development, with vacation residences flanking a new road along the spine of the bluff. As the program of the wool studio invokes the site’s history as grazing land, so its siting retains and embraces the wild thicket which pre-dates the burgeoning development. Small, hidden from the road, sited down the slope towards the wetland preserve, and literally turning its back on the adjacent houses, the Thicket is a polemic against the arrayed architectural posturings higher up the hill which are collectively eroding the natural context they mean to inhabit. Running the length of the lot is a collapsed ancient fieldstone wall with a windswept row of apple trees. Both have been retained. Along their axis is located the main wall of the new design, and in front of that, a passage cuts through the plan, forming the entryway.