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Fine Homebuilding: The Magazine

The Watershed: A Writing Studio

Robyn Doyon-Aitken, producer

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Sitting lightly on, and in, the landscape
Nested inside a prefabricated steel framework, this diminutive writing studio overlooks a meadow.

Gary Tarleton

Butterfly roof
The studio’s butterfly roof directs runoff into a trough that serves as the local watering hole.

Gary Tarleton

Room with a view
The big window above the writing desk frames a riparian forest in the distance, while below the desk, awning-style hinged panels rise to welcome meadow breezes.

Gary Tarleton

Sitting lightly on, and in, the landscape
Nested inside a prefabricated steel framework, this diminutive writing studio overlooks a meadow.

Photo: Gary Tarleton

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by Erin Moore

My family owns a small piece of former pasture-land in central Oregon. When my parents asked me to design a writing studio for the property, I worried that putting a building there would tarnish its ecological richness—that we would commit the age-old blunder of ruining a rare place by wanting to live right on it.

We talked over the question of building something for a couple of years. My family is a tough jury. My brother and my father are a research ecologist and a biologist, respectively; and my mother is an environmental philosopher and a nature writer. We all had a stake in the integrity of our tiny nature preserve, my mother needed a place to do her work, and I wanted to test out some new design ideas.

Our discussions unearthed two questions that became my design challenges: What kind of writing studio could we build without bringing a road or electricity to the site? And what could we build that would also disappear conveniently at the end of its useful life?

Before I finished the design, we took turns sitting in a chair on the hillside where the studio would be. We chose our favorite views, narrowed those down to just a handful, and then carefully measured where the openings should be to define them best.

The large window over the desk is the most traditional. It frames a moderately distant view of the field and the riparian forest. The high window at the rear frames a bit of sky in which there is often a raptor taking advantage of a local updraft.

Opposite the door is a very low window about 18 in. square that is meant to draw your eye to a patch of grass just outside—a view that is not extraordinary until you look closely and discover something like a new bloom or a cricket. It is easy to track seasonal changes in the color of the grasses through this window. It’s also my 2-year-old niece’s favorite.

Butterfly roof. The studio’s butterfly roof directs runoff into a trough that serves as the local watering hole.		Room with a view. The big window above the writing desk frames a riparian forest in the distance, while below the desk, awning-style hinged panels rise to welcome meadow breezes.

A cedar box inside a steel exoskeleton. The cedar posts are bolted to flanges welded to the steel frame. Tongueand- groove siding slips into grooves plowed in the sides of the cedar posts, making walls that can expand, contract, and breathe well in this damp climate. Photo: Frank Moore; Drawing: Erin Moore

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The Neighbor Out Back

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Small Spaces That are Great Places