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- The inspiration for this house came
from many different elements.
A design is a emotional or spiritual element,
which is a way one perceives space
and feels about different things.
Emotionally, I wanted a structure
that felt that it was soaring out into space,
almost defying gravity in a sense
but at the same time, tied back to the land itself
so that it feels that it's a part of the land
and it belongs in this one particular site.
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My name's Robert Oshatz.
I am the architect, builder and homeowner
of the Oak Rock Residence.
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I designed the house in beginning of 1988.
When I started the project and bought the land,
it had this wonderful view
of Mount Hood and Minam River.
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It was a difficult, very steep site.
At the time that I bought the property,
it was classified as unbuildable land.
As an architect, I know what you can do
and what you can't do.
Every site is buildable
if you look at it in a creative way
and look at it in terms of what is the poetry of this site?
What is it trying to say to you?
And how can I bring that poetic feeling out
in the structure?
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I acted as my own builder on it,
and what I did was I hired a young man
who never built a house before
but he was a handyman,
and he knew a little bit about concrete work,
a little bit of framing, a little bit of everything.
One of the really wonderful things about him
is that he had experience working
with kids that were in drug rehab programs
or high school dropouts,
so we brought these kids on,
and gave them the tools
and directed them on how to build the house.
The construction of the house
was far simpler than what it appears to be
when you see it.
When you see the house,
it's like a teeter-totter
where it cantilevers out
as it soars out in the space
but there's a counterweight
that goes down to the ground
that's a big concrete slab
that's keeping the house from tipping over.
So in a sense, the house was built upside down
where the smaller spaces are down below,
and as you go up,
and get a better view as you go up,
the house gets bigger and bigger,
so it actually created kind of a funnel shape.
And some people refer to the house as the funnel house.
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It's a three-story house
but every story is a split level,
so it has six different levels to it,
and I was able to get my driveway brought up into a carport
that was at the kind of halfway point of the house
so that you're never going up three flights of stairs
and then back down.
You walk in from the carport to the entry
and you just go up a half a flight,
and you're at the family living area.
Or from the entryway if you went down a half a flight,
you'd be at the children's bedroom level.
Once you get to the community living, dining,
family area, there's another half flight you can go up to
and that takes you to the primary bedroom area,
and that level, you have a sitting room first
where you can watch TV
or there's a desk behind some sliding doors
that can open up.
Behind that then becomes your sweeping area,
your dressing room
and your main bathroom facility.
All these different levels have their own balconies
and exterior connections to the outside.
And I also have my own architectural studio
in the house, which is the lowest level of the house
because that's the smallest space
in terms of area.
But that has a separate entry
so that I can say I actually have to walk to work every day.
[Robert chuckling]
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I wanted to make sure in this house
that the living area had a spectacular view
and although you'd get the view from other places
within the house, you'd get in a different way,
so I put the main sweeping area back further away
from the main view where you could get it
or when I'm laying on the daybed,
I can actually have an opening
where I can look out and also see Mount Hood
at the same time.
There's a great deal of wood on the interior
that when I was building this house
was predominantly local within Oregon.
The stone comes locally here in Oregon also.
Also, some of the use of material
is determined by effects that you're trying to create.
So for example, I wanted a main living space
that had just wonderful acoustics
so I can sit in the room in the evening
and just listen to music and relax.
So to do that, I designed the structure
where the main living area
didn't have any parallel walls to it.
The walls are at slight angles from one another.
The floor and the ceiling are not parallel.
And then I set my speakers in a cabinet
and shut them up towards the ceiling
so that the sound would hit this wood ceiling
and then spread out over into the space.
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I wanted to use natural materials as much as possible
and then introduce some color to the house
'cause you don't wanna create monotone feeling
throughout a structure.
You wanna have a play of materials, colors and textures.
You want a structure to feel warmth to it.
So this house is mainly just natural materials
and their natural colors,
but I did introduce a teal color
to pick up the sky, pick up the water below
and then down below on the outside,
there's some greenery
as that pick up just the landscape
but the choice of colors was mainly to create a structure
that felt that it was at peace within the environment
that it was in.
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When I'm designing the house,
I'm designing all of the furniture within the house
as I'm doing the preliminary drawings.
So as I was designing this main living space,
I had this couch already in mind,
and I had the dining table in mind,
and a lot of the other furniture in the house is built in.
Beds are built in, desks are built in,
kitchen table is built in.
One of the reasons I do the build-ins
is because I'm thinking of all these elements
as I'm designing the structure.
I'm thinking of the kitchen
and a place for a person to sit
so that someone can be cooking
and a few other people can be in the kitchen
and sitting and talking,
and everyone can be together.
So as you're thinking about these things,
all of a sudden, they become part of the design,
they become part of the lines of the house.
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The poetic sense in this house
was this dynamic hillside going up
and there was these beautiful trees.
The site had a sense of softness to it,
and I wanted to bring out that softness in the structure.
I wanted a structure that just gracefully soared out
into space because one of the beautiful things
about living in this house
is that you're so high off the ground
that you're able to watch the birds by looking down
on them and see how they soar
and how they float in space.
And I wanted that same feeling to be in the structure
but I wanted psychologically for people
to feel comfortable,
so I wanted to tie it back to the ground at the same time.
The important thing in architecture, in my mind,
is to design a structure that's at peace
with its environment,
and people feel at peace within the structure itself.
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After I completed the house,
I realized that I've always dreamt since childhood
of living on water or by water.
And I realize that this might be the closest
I ever get to water.
So I decided to stay in the house
and live in it, and I've been in it now
for about 33 years.
[pensive music] [birds tweeting]
Every project starts with a particular site
and a particular program,
and needs that you're trying to solve.
So architecture is really solving the problems
on the way a person wants to use a structure,
and not starting with a preconceived idea
but solving the problems from the inside,
working your way out.
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