The Yellow House is built on a slope of the great wide-open Champlain Valley in northwest Vermont overlooking Lake Champlain and New York State’s Adirondack Mountains beyond. The clients lived for years in a houseboat on the Hudson River in New York City. With two cats, a dog, and a child, and plants growing on the decks, they opted finally for some solid terra firma.

The Hudson connects to Lake Champlain through a series of locks so that their old and new domiciles are connected by the boats in which they love to move about. The house, built on a large generous slope above the lake, hitches itself to the landscape via a series of rippling landscaped terraces carved into land off its south facing flank. The house rises up and out of the hill under a dominant roof, launching itself towards the lake, and the houseboat in the very far distance.

An open first floor plan of living, dining, and kitchen space looks out to the west view. The entire south side of the space absorbs light from a two-story-high space which ends at the east end with a greenhouse and a study behind it. the second floor consists of a master bedroom (overlooking the same western view), two children’s bedrooms, and a guest suite.