Sunset House

Master plan, single family house and outbuildings

In a small town north of Lafayette, LA a family wishes to build their estate. The overall program includes a four-bedroom house with large indoor and outdoor entertainment spaces, a vegetable garden, a restaurant farm, a small fruit orchard, a mother-in-law cottage, a swimming pool, a fishing/retention pond, and a large storage shed/workshop. All of this is to be sited on a virgin 35 acre cane field located in the horizontal landscape of Louisiana’s cheniere plain. We ask how one establishes place in the “field?” What will become groomed? What will stay virgin? What is the built context when most buildings are few and far between? What is the country home in contemporary culture? The family will live in Sunset year round so this estate must work on all fronts. This project is inspired by the Louisiana tectonic history of homes in the field. From the Italian villa that came to Louisiana via the West Indies, the Quebecois farm house that came with the Acadians to the Creole cottage and Cajun homestead, the SUNSET house takes its origin from these archetypes and works to establish a contemporary language for habitation in the “field.”