I finally designed a complete house, able to host a whole family and occasional guests for weekends and vacations, all along the year. I chose to locate it in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, in front of a lake and backed onto a slope, to enjoy the most breathtaking view during the entire day. Its ground basement is made out of three 40ft modified shipping containers. This allows to store all the technical equipment of the house, but also all the leisure and outdoor stuff that goes with the house, plus extra beds for the guests.

On the top of it, a second structure made out of wood hosts the living room with a kitchen and the upper floors. These ones are split into 2 clear areas: the back one for the kids, and the front one for the parents, both linked by a shared bathroom. The kids have a nice playground, while the parents have a lightful workplace on their side.

Thanks to a generous height, each side also has its own mezzanine, allowing the kids to have a “cabin inside the cabin,” from where they can observe nature on the back side of the mountain, and the parents to enjoy a high placed bedroom up above the lake.

The small roof is accessible from the inside and serves as an observation point. Two massive decks surround the front zone, giving sunlight on the top, and shadow on the bottom.

The Workflow

I modeled the whole house into Sketchup, and imported it into Lumion 8.3, into which I was able to create the context from scratch and then scatter it with the internal libraries.

I made a full 3D environment, which allowed me to make a video showing almost every part of the house, and on the other hand, reduce the post-processing phase consequently and entirely skip a 2D compositing pass. I rendered everything with a single Alienware workstation.

I want to thank Ronen for this challenging topic, which made me so enthusiastic! As I’ve always been a great fan of cabins making in my childhood. But it has also been a great occasion to conceive and develop a concept involving prefabrication and quick construction processes. I also want to congratulate the competitors, as many of the entries are very impressive…

So, good luck to everybody, and may the best one win!

The Bow House Animation