Toshiko Mori by Richard Powers

Toshiko Mori

Pictures Richard Powers

Words Dominic Bradbury

With its dramatic hilltop location, Toshiko Mori’s Cloudline house in upstate New York is a building that embraces the landscape at every turn. The house pushes outwards into a vast carpet of green woodland and rolling countryside spread out in front of it, with views of Albany in one direction and the Catskills in another.

The key element of this fresh, family weekend and holiday retreat is a cantilevered form with the bedrooms of the upper storey thrusting out into the void and connecting directly with the best of the views, while also providing the terraces and main living spaces below with a degree of shading from the high summer sun.

The master suite includes a balcony, as well as floor to ceiling windows that embrace a tranquil, verdant aspect, made all the more dramatic by the way that the land falls away directly in front of the house while woodland behind forms a welcoming, protective and organic foil.

The upper storey includes bedrooms and a library, while the lower level is devoted to the main livings spaces within a fluid and flexible plan with very few solid doors. The main sitting room sits at the front of the house, with a dining area to one side and a more intimate lounge to the other. The kitchen, breakfast room and entryway are situated to the rear.

The clients are art collectors and the house features many significant pieces indoors and out, including the lifesize iron man by Anthony Gormley at the front of the house, savouring that magical landscape