Inside An Architect's Retro Treetop Home

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The inspiration for this house came

from many different elements.

A design is a emotional or spiritual element,

which is a way one perceives space

and feels about different things.

Emotionally, I wanted a structure

that felt that it was soaring out into space,

almost defying gravity in a sense

but at the same time, tied back to the land itself

so that it feels that it's a part of the land

and it belongs in this one particular site.

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My name's Robert Oshatz.

I am the architect, builder and homeowner

of the Oak Rock Residence.

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I designed the house in beginning of 1988.

When I started the project and bought the land,

it had this wonderful view

of Mount Hood and Minam River.

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It was a difficult, very steep site.

At the time that I bought the property,

it was classified as unbuildable land.

As an architect, I know what you can do

and what you can't do.

Every site is buildable

if you look at it in a creative way

and look at it in terms of what is the poetry of this site?

What is it trying to say to you?

And how can I bring that poetic feeling out

in the structure?

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I acted as my own builder on it,

and what I did was I hired a young man

who never built a house before

but he was a handyman,

and he knew a little bit about concrete work,

a little bit of framing, a little bit of everything.

One of the really wonderful things about him

is that he had experience working

with kids that were in drug rehab programs

or high school dropouts,

so we brought these kids on,

and gave them the tools

and directed them on how to build the house.

The construction of the house

was far simpler than what it appears to be

when you see it.

When you see the house,

it's like a teeter-totter

where it cantilevers out

as it soars out in the space

but there's a counterweight

that goes down to the ground

that's a big concrete slab

that's keeping the house from tipping over.

So in a sense, the house was built upside down

where the smaller spaces are down below,

and as you go up,

and get a better view as you go up,

the house gets bigger and bigger,

so it actually created kind of a funnel shape.

And some people refer to the house as the funnel house.

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It's a three-story house

but every story is a split level,

so it has six different levels to it,

and I was able to get my driveway brought up into a carport

that was at the kind of halfway point of the house

so that you're never going up three flights of stairs

and then back down.

You walk in from the carport to the entry

and you just go up a half a flight,

and you're at the family living area.

Or from the entryway if you went down a half a flight,

you'd be at the children's bedroom level.

Once you get to the community living, dining,

family area, there's another half flight you can go up to

and that takes you to the primary bedroom area,

and that level, you have a sitting room first

where you can watch TV

or there's a desk behind some sliding doors

that can open up.

Behind that then becomes your sweeping area,

your dressing room

and your main bathroom facility.

All these different levels have their own balconies

and exterior connections to the outside.

And I also have my own architectural studio

in the house, which is the lowest level of the house

because that's the smallest space

in terms of area.

But that has a separate entry

so that I can say I actually have to walk to work every day.

[Robert chuckling]

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I wanted to make sure in this house

that the living area had a spectacular view

and although you'd get the view from other places

within the house, you'd get in a different way,

so I put the main sweeping area back further away

from the main view where you could get it

or when I'm laying on the daybed,

I can actually have an opening

where I can look out and also see Mount Hood

at the same time.

There's a great deal of wood on the interior

that when I was building this house

was predominantly local within Oregon.

The stone comes locally here in Oregon also.

Also, some of the use of material

is determined by effects that you're trying to create.

So for example, I wanted a main living space

that had just wonderful acoustics

so I can sit in the room in the evening

and just listen to music and relax.

So to do that, I designed the structure

where the main living area

didn't have any parallel walls to it.

The walls are at slight angles from one another.

The floor and the ceiling are not parallel.

And then I set my speakers in a cabinet

and shut them up towards the ceiling

so that the sound would hit this wood ceiling

and then spread out over into the space.

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I wanted to use natural materials as much as possible

and then introduce some color to the house

'cause you don't wanna create monotone feeling

throughout a structure.

You wanna have a play of materials, colors and textures.

You want a structure to feel warmth to it.

So this house is mainly just natural materials

and their natural colors,

but I did introduce a teal color

to pick up the sky, pick up the water below

and then down below on the outside,

there's some greenery

as that pick up just the landscape

but the choice of colors was mainly to create a structure

that felt that it was at peace within the environment

that it was in.

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When I'm designing the house,

I'm designing all of the furniture within the house

as I'm doing the preliminary drawings.

So as I was designing this main living space,

I had this couch already in mind,

and I had the dining table in mind,

and a lot of the other furniture in the house is built in.

Beds are built in, desks are built in,

kitchen table is built in.

One of the reasons I do the build-ins

is because I'm thinking of all these elements

as I'm designing the structure.

I'm thinking of the kitchen

and a place for a person to sit

so that someone can be cooking

and a few other people can be in the kitchen

and sitting and talking,

and everyone can be together.

So as you're thinking about these things,

all of a sudden, they become part of the design,

they become part of the lines of the house.

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The poetic sense in this house

was this dynamic hillside going up

and there was these beautiful trees.

The site had a sense of softness to it,

and I wanted to bring out that softness in the structure.

I wanted a structure that just gracefully soared out

into space because one of the beautiful things

about living in this house

is that you're so high off the ground

that you're able to watch the birds by looking down

on them and see how they soar

and how they float in space.

And I wanted that same feeling to be in the structure

but I wanted psychologically for people

to feel comfortable,

so I wanted to tie it back to the ground at the same time.

The important thing in architecture, in my mind,

is to design a structure that's at peace

with its environment,

and people feel at peace within the structure itself.

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After I completed the house,

I realized that I've always dreamt since childhood

of living on water or by water.

And I realize that this might be the closest

I ever get to water.

So I decided to stay in the house

and live in it, and I've been in it now

for about 33 years.

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Every project starts with a particular site

and a particular program,

and needs that you're trying to solve.

So architecture is really solving the problems

on the way a person wants to use a structure,

and not starting with a preconceived idea

but solving the problems from the inside,

working your way out.

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