Explore top Vermont green home design trends: smaller footprints, ADUs, hybrid prefabrication, and local sustainable materials.

Transforming a 1960s Vermont ranch into a modern, age-in-place haven with an open-plan layout, master suite addition, and meadow views.

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…..

Celebrating over ten years of serving Vermont with inspired, sustainable architecture—wishing you happy holidays from Arocordis Design.

Commission custom watercolor house portraits by Stephen M. Frey, AIA: a unique architectural gift celebrating home, memory, and sense of place.