Staggered Cabin

Staggered Cabin is a minimalist residence located in South Lake Tahoe, California, designed by Mork-Ulnes Architects. At 6,000 feet above sea level, where the Sierra Nevada slope meets dense Jeffrey Pine forest, building lightly becomes both an environmental imperative and a design opportunity. Mork-Ulnes Architects’ response to this alpine site – four cedar-clad volumes arranged in descending formation – demonstrates how repetitive forms can generate spatial complexity when choreographed across shifting terrain. What began as a weekend ski retreat for an Australian couple evolved into a permanent family home, its compact 1,400-square-foot program shaped by the clients’ minimalist convictions and the forested landscape’s fragile ecology.

The staggered arrangement does more than accommodate slope – it creates a rhythm of compression and release that structures daily life. Each shed-roofed volume steps down the incline, carving out sheltered courtyards that preserve existing boulders and mature pines while establishing outdoor rooms integral to the family’s spatial experience. This strategy eliminates conventional hallways, instead organizing circulation around a central great room that connects perpendicular volumes through sliding glass doors opening to landscape on both sides. The result is a house experienced as a sequence of linked spaces rather than discrete rooms, where sightlines cut diagonally through multiple volumes and vertical loft spaces introduce unexpected layering within the pitched roof forms.

Douglas fir plywood becomes the unifying material language throughout – face-framed cabinets with flush fronts, open shelving, and wall paneling create visual continuity while maximizing storage within compressed footprints. Lexie Mork-Ulnes’ interior detailing places utility functions at the low roof edges, reserving the higher volumes for living spaces animated by clerestory windows that frame the pine canopy overhead. Custom-built elements like a storage sofa and a plywood ladder accessing a mezzanine office eliminate furniture clutter, creating open floor planes where children can move freely between indoor and outdoor play.

The dark-stained western red cedar cladding and standing-seam metal roofs respond directly to Tahoe Basin environmental requirements while establishing the cabin’s visual relationship to forest shadows and weathered bark. Steep roof pitches optimize solar exposure and snow shedding, with engineered snow guards retaining an insulating snow layer through winter months. Narrow floor plates enable cross-ventilation through paired operable windows, while high clerestories distribute daylight deep into interior volumes, reducing artificial lighting dependency. Stormwater management integrates infiltration elements that prevent surface flows toward Lake Tahoe, and minimal hardscaping preserves natural ground conditions across the site.

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