K House by CODA

This beautiful and unique house located in Spencer, New York, doubles as a studio for a local artist. The owner was intent on incorporating a wide array of recycled materials into the construction of the home and studio. When the idea of a recycled studio in the woods of upstate New York was put before Caroline O’Donnell of CODA Architects, she recommended that her client reutilize the charred wood of a cabin that had recently burned down on the property. Caroline mentions that even though the owner said that she wanted a recycled house, “it did not occur to her to use the charred wood of her recently burned home.”

This strategy drastically reduced the amount of wood needed to construct the home/studio. Still, it also reduced the emissions associated with transporting wood that might have been cut, logged, and milled on the other side of the country. The charred wood used in the home is similar to shou sugi ban, the Japanese technique of preserving wood through slight burning. The wood from the burned-down cabin offered a recycled, locally available wood resource that wouldn’t need to be chemically treated or cured for durability.

The home reused the existing concrete slab where the prior cabin had stood as another form of recycling and reducing material needs. The construction also ingeniously incorporated local stones and mushroom spores in the design and construction, while recycled glass and clothing were also part of the final construction. The roof was designed to collect water at the service end of the building for re-use in the bathroom and kitchen, thus reutilizing and “recycling” water that would otherwise have to be pumped in from a distant source at an enormous ecological and energetic cost.

The porch roof of the K House purposefully incorporates a “hole” to allow one of the existing trees on the property to penetrate and integrate into the building. Along with several other trees near the building, the tree is woven into the home's ambiance in a unique and beautiful biophilic design.

Starting almost a decade ago, the Cronks embarked on a mission to build their own Earthship, a sustainable building design and philosophy that focuses on reutilizing materials to create net-zero homes that don’t require any outside inputs. Over five years of work, the Cronks filled and compacted over 1,300 used tires that they had collected from junkyards, repair shops, and even folks on Craigslist looking to get rid of their used car tires.