Cross River, New York, USA
Nestled at the southern edge of a large estate in Westchester County, New York, this residential project by Joeb Moore & Partners Architects, merges architecture and landscape to create a multifunctional space rooted in context and continuity.
Designed as a multifunctional space—serving as a garden, guesthouse, and event venue—it reflects a sensitive integration of landscape, form, and program.
Named Meadow Pavilion Residence, the project has been awarded a 2024 American Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The structure is accessed by foot, via a processional journey from the main house.
The natural grading of the meadow was maintained so to integrate a path along an existing hedge row of trees that divides the lower meadow from an upper knoll.
The path is interrupted by a series of perpendicular cast-in-place concrete retaining walls, which contain stepped terrace gardens that emerge out of the sloping topography.
The “secret garden” is a transitional space that stretches our perception of time and space to simultaneously experience the near and far.
The immediacy and power of the concrete walls in contrast to the vegetation contrast and complement each other.
Upon descending through the stepped terrace gardens, one arrives at the entry terrace, defined by a reflecting pool of water.
Together, reflecting pool, exterior glass and roof overhang (clad in a reflective aluminum panel) all function as transformative, non-static and visually provocative materials intended to simultaneously contrast against and blend into the undulating ground plane and meadow.
The louvered exterior façade is a congruent detail at the interior of the building, functioning as both a porous ceiling and wall element.
Similarly, the perforated blackened metal stair, meticulously bent and welded, intends to dissolve into interior space.
The pavilion project approaches landscape and building as “performance” rather than “appearance,” seeking an architecture that acts like nature as opposed to looking like nature.
As architects working in the expanded field of landscape and art, they shape not just geometry, material and space, but also, the historical & cultural flows that are already at work, embedded, in the site.
This architecture is about a journey and a story that entwines the land and architecture together.
Project: Meadow Pavilion Residence
Architects: Joeb Moore & Partners Architects
Lead Architect: Joeb Moore
Client: Private
Photographers: David Sundberg / Esto
