Partnering with nature: how earth-sheltered home design solves Vermont's harsh winters while blending seamlessly into the landscape.

Planning a custom garage, art studio, or ADU? Explore best practices for flex buildings, climate resilience, and universal design.

Under construction: a net-zero, rustic modern custom home in Northern Vermont designed for sustainable, eco-friendly family living 

Read about case study from an unbuilt project adapted from our Inside-Out House, a net-zero-ready prototype home design.

It started with an email

Recently, a client sought us out to adapt our ZigZag House2 home design for her property in Northern Vermont. For her, the 1,000 square foot 2-bedroom single-level home was a great starting point but she wanted to adapt it in a variety of ways to better suit her needs. A home-based writer, she wrote in a small specially design cabin bucolically located on the edge of a large pond with scenic views of the hills and mountains to the west. The primary two-story single-family home nearby anchored the hillside property, a former dairy farm.

Our client sought to lease the main house to another family while designing and building a new compact home for herself nearby around the same pond as the writer’s cabin. She set some inspiring goals which included:

• To create a sustainable climate-positive home while also allowing her to travel for months at a time, leaving the home in easy to maintain hibernation mode while away for extended periods.

• Design and refine the existing ZigZag2 House design to be even simpler, unifying some of the separate living volumes…..

Have land in Vermont and seeking a net-zero home design to build? We developed the Wing House design prototype. It joins earlier ones such as Inside-Out Home, Modern Farmhaus, and others.