Kolbe Windows & Doors Help a New Home Reflect & Respect its Site

With views of the Catskill Mountains, restored meadows and preserved woods, a single-story home reclines atop a hill in the Hudson Valley, a couple of hours north of New York City. The owners sought a tranquil retreat for family and guests to find inspiration and connection. Interweaving indoor and outdoor space, the house’s grandly scaled daylight openings, exposed timber-framed construction and regionally quarried stonework create a soothingly solid, natural material palette.

Custom-designed by Lake Flato Architects, the home’s blend of traditional craftmanship and contemporary technologies defies a specific architectural style. Conceived before the pandemic, its construction employed a combination of hand-crafted, prefabricated and site-assembled solutions. This high-performance, all-electric home is powered by renewable geothermal wells with a solar-ready roof for future flexibility.

Design-driven Collaboration

Headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, Lake Flato Architects creates spaces “that enrich communities and nurture life.” Its projects are described as “tactile and modern, environmentally responsible, and authentic, artful and well-crafted. The firm’s designs evolve from an appreciation for the pragmatic solutions of vernacular architecture, the honesty of modernism, and the context of our rich and varied landscape. By employing sustainable strategies to a wide variety of building types and scales, Lake Flato generates architecture, interiors, and urban design and planning solutions that conserve energy and natural resources, while creating high-performance buildings and healthy built environments.”

Rebecca Bruce Comeaux, AIA, LEED AP, is a professional architect with 20 years of specialization in custom residential projects, including with Lake Flato Architects and now as owner of Comeaux Architects.

Rebecca said she works in collaboration with clients to create residential projects that “thoughtfully connect aspects of place and people into a coherent, compelling whole. Designing projects from New York to New Mexico, I incorporate regional materials that respond to the local climate and craft.”

Before starting her own firm, Hudson Valley Retreat was one of Rebecca’s final projects with Lake Flato’s Residential Studio. Her coworkers on the project included Bill Aylor, AIA, who has since retired, and Catherine St-Pierre, AIA, who had joined the firm in 2016 to begin her professional career.

While most of their work was done virtually, Rebecca and Bill visited the site and met with the owners in person during the pre-pandemic design phase and during construction. These meetings helped them to better understand the client’s needs and to inform the design concept and its future construction.

“‘Vistas and vignettes’ is what Bill used to say,” remembered Rebecca. “The vignettes are the views into the woods and from the bedrooms. The windows at the front of the house frame the vistas of the Catskills. In the living room and dining room, we maxed out the views with the enormous windows. We went as large as Kolbe could go. The result is astonishing. The scale is breathtaking.”

She continued, “At Lake Flato and for most of my clients’ projects, I’m designing openings that span wall-to-wall and corner-to-corner to get that full view and immersive experience. We’re not interested in a standard, rectangular window set in a typical, modestly sized, rough opening. These windows are uniquely made to fit the shape, scale and style of each project.”

Massive direct set windows crowned with triangle-shaped windows are the centerpieces of the two ends of the main living space’s window-wall configuration. The triangles precisely follow the exposed ceiling trusses’ 45-degree openings. In the living room, awning windows underline the direct set, and swing doors topped with transoms flank the full configuration.

Rebecca noted the project’s material selection was grounded in building science with consideration for thermal performance and sustainability. Well versed with Kolbe’s broader product portfolio, this project was her first with the VistaLuxe WD LINE. She utilized this product’s narrow profiles to capitalize on the oversized openings and leveraged the wood to bring intrinsic warmth to the interior space.

Kolbe’s VistaLuxe WD LINE products were crafted from vertical grain Douglas Fir to match the home’s exposed timber framing, ceilings, interior doors and wood trim. The interior was finished in a natural, clear, low-VOC finish applied on site.

The exterior of the windows and doors was factory-finished in a Midnight color using a durable 70% fluoropolymer architectural coating. “No one wants to spend their time repainting and maintaining window frames. The painted exteriors take minimal maintenance and will last a long time,” acknowledged Rebecca.

“Through the years, I’ve used Kolbe’s windows and doors on a lot of projects. They make great products and have great service,” she said. “My go-to Kolbe contact is always responsive and willing to look at our designs, listen to the challenges we’re facing and help us accomplish our goals. As architects, that’s what we want; it’s what we need.”