Ridge House and Barn
Architect: Worrell Yeung
Location: New York State
Type: House
Year: 2025
Photographs: Rafael Gamo
Site-sensitive retreat marries architecture and landscape art, material restraint with expressiveness.
The following description is courtesy of the architects. One hundred miles north of Midtown Manhattan, a wooded upland emerges from the farms and villages dotting the landscape of lower Columbia County, New York. Atop this wooded knoll, Brooklyn-based architecture studio Worrell Yeung have designed Ridge House, a restrained yet materially expressive home for a young family of four.
The residence is designed to take full advantage of views to the west looking on to the Catskill Mountains and the east as the Taconic Range beckons into Massachusetts. One arrives via a long and circuitous drive. Set within an 88 acre ridgeline property, the project consists of two separate buildings—a main house and an outbuilding, affectionately called the “barn,” plus pool—which are formally similar but materially distinguished.
About Ridge House
Atop this ridgeline, the main house’s simple, 128’-long gabled structure is threaded within the landscape, emerging from the woods into a clearing that looks out to the mountains. On approach, there is no traditional front door. Rather, one enters via a pass-through space at the center of the structure, a dynamic threshold indicated by board-formed concrete walls. Upon entry, one is able to access a social wing of the house, framing vistas to the Catskills and Taconics, or a more secluded bedroom wing that tucks back into the forest.
Inside, the main social space consolidates the kitchen, dining area, and living room into a single lofted room. The gable peaks at 20 feet, creating an airy interior. One end of the social space is a custom concrete kitchen island while on the opposite side of the space is a concrete fireplace. On either side of these two extrusions, 30 foot expanses of glass highlight the main attraction—unimpeded views to the two mountain ranges, the defining characteristic of the site that drew the client to the property.
“When I saw this site, with its remarkable views to not one but two mountain ranges, I knew I had something special,” shared the client, a practicing psychologist. “In collaborating with Worrell Yeung, my main responsibility was to allow them to do what they do best, which is create a sensitive, expressive experience of undeniable beauty. The result speaks for itself.”
Extending from this social space, a covered veranda looking to the west allows for indoor/outdoor enjoyment of the Catskills. Custom lighting designed by Worrell Yeung for Lambert & Fils descends over the dining table. In profile, the metal fixtures are twin gables, casting light up to the lofted ceiling and down to the custom dining table fabricated by Bien Hecho. Interior design was done by Colony, which took an approach of layered warmth offset by the cool tones of indigo grey for the personal and private areas of the home.
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Two bedrooms and a primary suite compose the more private wing of the house. Accessed on the opposite side of the entry’s dynamic threshold, a long hallway runs along the east side of the structure, with views to the Taconics and surrounding woods on one side and a long wall of white-oak cladding on the opposite, with doors to the bedrooms subtly indicated by metal hardware.
In these private spaces, Worrell Yeung remains committed to the beauty of simple geometries, adhering to an 8×8 module across the main house and barn. The far wall of each guest bedroom is a large window looking out onto the landscape. Because of the window’s size, seven by nine feet, and its simplicity free of fittings and adornments, it would be nearly impossible to allow it to open. To solve this, Worrell Yeung designed one section of the square as a “visionless window” of dark-stained white oak, which acts as a vent and allows fresh air to enter the room.
Sited at the end of the long hallway, the primary suite occupies the southern end of the residence and continues this adherence to geometric purity. Three of the four walls in the primary suite include a large square window with its respective “visionless” complement. In front of one window, a large custom concrete bathtub affords views west while soaking. A freestanding vanity and shower also appear within the main space, with other facilities tucked behind the fourth wall of the primary suite.
About Ridge Barn
Leaving the main house from the dynamic threshold, one proceeds outside along a “trench walk,” an element of the environment co-created with Jeffrey Longhenry of Understory Landscape Architecture. The trench walk is informed by the land art pioneers like Andy Goldsworthy and Michael Heizer. Large stone pavers terrace down the hill, carved into the land and creating a pathway between the main house and Ridge Barn.
The barn nomenclature draws upon the vernacular “bank barns” present throughout the area, in which a structure is embedded into the landscape allowing grade access on two levels, the lower of which can be used for cold storage. Clad in corten panels, the barn is nestled into the hillside and on its lower level accommodates parking, a bike workshop and a wine cellar.
From the upper level, an open breezeway frames an 8×8 view to the Taconic Mountains and allows access to a fitness space to the north side and an open plan bunkhouse for guests to the south. The bunkhouse is its own suite, with smaller scale living, dining, and sleeping spaces, complemented by a lofted sleeping area with custom ladder. Two Worrell Yeung-designed Lambert & Fils light fixtures illuminate this space.
“Our intention with Ridge Barn was to create something special for the owners that stood apart from the main house, while remaining in dialogue with certain geometries and material choices,” shared Jejon Yeung, co-founder of Worrell Yeung.
The lower level of the barn serves, in part, as a de facto pool house for the property, offering a
shower, water closet, and changing areas for anyone hoping to swim.
About the Pool
Flat stone pavers lead from the lower level of the barn to the pool area. Two sides of the pool appear at grade, with weather wood decking allowing one to walk around and choose an entry point to take a dip. As the landscape slopes down, the other two sides of the pool are revealed, clad in corten and hearkening back to the adjacent barn, appearing as an embedded object within the sloped terrain.
Material palette and inspiration
A utilitarian material palette is a hallmark of all structures. The main house is wrapped in corrugated metal, bookended with board-formed concrete walls. The barn is a corten marvel. Each structure, with its efficient configuration and elemental, untreated materiality is meant to weather at different rates and be a barometer to the elements of the surrounding site over time.
“Even in the earliest correspondence with our client, it became clear we were interested in the same concepts—landscape as art, architecture elevating the experience of nature, making visible the mark of human intervention,” Worrell Yeung co-founder Max Worrell shared.
“From land art to the farmhouse vernacular to the textural nuance of a cut log to observing the accidental beauty of how fallen trees rest on a forest floor, Ridge House is the consolidation of references and allusions, and the synthesis of how they can create a timeless architecture that can co-exist in a unique landscape environment,” Yeung concluded.
Among the quaint villages and farms that Columbia County is known for, Ridge House remains singular thanks to this site with views to the Taconics and Catskills and the way in which architect, interior designer, landscape architect, and client accord yielded a home that can take celebrate this location to its fullest extent.
Project Credits
- Architect: Worrell Yeung (Max Worrell, partner in charge; Jejon Yeung, partner; Beatriz de Uña Bóveda, project architect)
- Interiors: Colony (Jean Lin, Madeleine Parsons)
- Landscape Architect: Understory Landscape Architecture (Jeffrey Longhenry, Emma Goode)
- Engineers: Silman (Geoff Smith)
- MEP: Bauwerk (Cramer Silkworth)
- Contractor: Heitmann Builders
- Civil: Crawford (Christopher Knox)
