Located in a historic town in the middle of Yosemite National Park, the Wawona House is a study in contrasts.
While the compact, modern form of the building may stand out amongst the mosaic of the town's structures (Wawona is home to a mixture of typologies - family homes, park service housing, a small school, a library, and a historic hotel), the building's material palette is wholly of the landscape, allowing the house to feel at ease amongst its wooded environment and the rustic setting of a small town within a National Park. The juxtaposition between the light and dark siding recalls the variegation of the surrounding terrain and anchors the building on its site.
The house opens up to dramatic views of the Wawona Dome and the Sierra Nevada Mountains beyond, and provides a wrap-around deck with sliding glass doors that make the living room fully connected to the outdoors.
Built for a couple with grown children and their families, the house is both a quiet retreat to the wilderness and a place for holiday gatherings. The property having been in the family for decades, the owner spent her childhood summers there, working seasonally in the park and staying in the small cabin that previously inhabited the site. A desire for a larger space to host their annual Thanksgiving celebrations is what spurred the drive to build a new house. In contrast with the cramped dining space of the previous cabin, the new kitchen and dining space is open to the double-height living room and its sweeping views of the site, mountains, and the Wawona Dome beyond, allowing the family to come together and fully enjoy the beauty of the landscape that surrounds them.
Building a house in a National Park is a rare situation that was not without some unique challenges. Situated on a lot that would be considered tight even in a dense, urban context, the lot is surrounded by parcels owned by the National Park. While this gives literal new meaning to the idea of "having the park in your own backyard," the remoteness of the site proved difficult for construction access; the small, steeply sloping lot added a layer of complexity during excavation and made the staging of materials and equipment a tricky task for the construction team.
In addition to construction challenges, the size of the site also played a role in the design of the building. Trying to maximize potential of the comparitively small lot was one of the main drivers that led to the design team conceiving of the building as a tight form with a large carve-out. The living room opens on two sides to the relatively narrow deck, a critical design move that allows both the outdoor and indoor spaces to feel much larger than they seem on paper.
