A retirement house shaped by oak leaves in Chatham

This New York house is really a landscape project in domestic form. Designed by Desai Chia Architecture for a couple planning their retirement, Chatham Residence sits on an 80-acre property in Columbia County, near the Catskills. The studio looked closely at the site’s understorey, tree canopy and distant hills, then translated those observations into a single-storey home with a sculptural roof modelled on native oak leaves.

That roof does much of the work. Its curved overhangs are designed to throw shifting shadows, echoing the patterns the team saw beneath the trees. Corrugated metal wraps the exterior in what the architects describe as a continuous ripple, while soffits and covered outdoor seating areas are finished in plain-sawn accoya wood. Inside, the central living, dining and kitchen space is softened by curved corners and a vaulted ceiling, with floor-to-ceiling glazing opening the house to the surrounding meadows and forest.

The plan is straightforward: shared spaces in the middle, the primary bedroom in one wing and additional bedrooms in the other. A detached guesthouse also serves as the couple’s home office, and there is a greenhouse and barn on site developed with Rimol Greenhouses. The clients already use the land for animals and planting, so this is less an idea on paper than a settled way of living — one to read for its careful response to site rather than for any visit.

Our summary of a story from Dezeen, published 2 October 2026. Read the original

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