HEBER SPRINGS, ARKANSAS
This project is a complex consisting of a new main house, a detached
garage/storage building and a screened "bank house" located on
the Little Red River in Heber Springs, Arkansas. The site is a
thickly wooded, sloping four acre lot facing the river on the south, with
rock outcroppings and a stone cliff on the north.
The design concept sprang directly from the site conditions. The strategy was to create a group of buildings related by scale, proportion and detail rendered in materials appropriate to the farmhouse imagery.
Integrated into its forest setting by serpentine stone retaining walls, the house rises on a stone base and is perched high over the site creating views to the water from the porch and views to the rock cliffs from the terrace.
The asymmetrical plan, organized about two axes, defines spaces which flow freely through the house. The most dramatic spatial feature of the building is the spiral stair with its circular cutout and the crossing of the roof intersection overhead. The bookend stone fireplaces define the main space. The front of the house reflects the scale and character of the river. The rear frames views of the boulders and rock cliffs through it stone columns and timber trellis.