AR+D
Todd MacAllen and Stephanie Forsythe	House and stable	Colorado, USA	December 1999
Made as much for its equine occupant as the human one, this house invokes the dream of living in the wild.
One of the most simple and romantic buildings we saw was for a woman and her horse in Colorado, USA. Solar powered, the volume has a first floor for human living in which is a kitchen, dining room and sleeping loft of thin re-used Douglas fir slats. A big concrete dining table provides thermal mass, and at the same time acts as a radiant heater from the wood stove underneath. The whole roof ridge is glazed, offering awesome panoramas of the ever-changing sky. The ground floor has a small bedroom and bathroom – and a few steps down, the horse’s quarters, from which the animal can look out through a stable door over the wild rolling tree-studded country. The house is clad in green (unseasoned) local pine – apart from the entrance corridor, which in proper eco-fashion is made of stone gathered from the site. The outer rain skin of wide-set boards is set off from the inner carcase, acting as a weather protection and stiffening element in an area subject to hurricanes. There is much more to learn from this house than appears at first sight. Architects Todd MacAllen and Stephanie Forsythe