TO THE UNTRAINED EYE, the setting for Jessica Cook’s house and home office in Wilmot might seem to have come straight from a verse of a Robert Frost poem, or a poem written by a former neighbor and award-winning poet Donald Hall.

“He lived at the other end of Eagle Pond,” Cook says. “His poetry and writings really exemplify the spirit of the area as he experienced it but are also internationally known.”

For architects and builders, however, the home—which Cook shares with her architect husband, Scott McCullough; two young children, Elsie and Cassidy; plus a dog named Piney, a cat named Otto and six ducks—is not the product of a poet’s fertile imagination. Instead, it is the result of careful, thoughtful design and fastidious construction, combining the best of its idyllic “traditional” New England setting and modern building techniques to create a self-sustaining home. In short, the house is a striking, technological marvel set amid nature’s woods.

“The property is 43 acres of rolling, forested hills,” Cook says. “After purchasing, we spent quite a bit of time determining the best site for the house. The long side of the house with the most glass was placed on a southern slope, which gave us the opportunity for a walk-out basement, and the gable with a lot of glass faces east toward the view of the back of Ragged Mountain.”

Given her surroundings, it’s little surprise that Cook established her own architectural firm— Eagle Pond Studio—at the house in 2016. The home was a collaboration between Cook, a native of nearby Danbury, and McCullough, who is originally from Boston’s North Shore. The two met while attending Norwich University in Vermont, where Cook specialized in sustainable design. Initially, the couple was thinking of a part-time escape but professional serendipity changed those plans.

“After getting married, we originally wanted to buy property and build a small home to come to on weekends while visiting family in New Hampshire,” Cook says. “But getting the opportunity to work in New London early on in the process, the design changed to a fulltime residence.

“Our house is a good example of the architecture we felt was appropriate for the time, context, climate, site and current design technologies,” she says. “It really has been a good example of what is possible for modern design in a rural setting and was somewhat forwardthinking for New Hampshire.”

Though having two architectural minds working on the same project might appear to be a benefit, it was critical that Cook and McCullough were on the same page throughout the process. “Luckily, we have a very similar philosophy about architecture and design,” Cook says. “It might be because we went to the same architecture school and had many of the same professors, who taught us about contextual design.

“We have both worked for some really thoughtful, residential designers throughout New England on very large, complex projects,” she says.

“And we both have art backgrounds, like to learn new things and have creative minds.”

While the couple generally agreed on key components of the house, there were moments when compromise came into play.

“We did debate having a walk-out basement, weighing the practical uses versus the aesthetics, but were able to design something that fit both well,” she says. “As architects, it’s easy for us to draw or model iterations, and look at them to make a decision. That is a lot of what we do: draw and look at things to come to the appropriate version before being built.”

Initially, McCullough says the couple “didn’t focus too much on what the end result should be.” The final building, he says, is the product of the couple remaining true to the process, which in turn dictated the design.

“A simple form and an energy-efficient building were givens,” McCullough says. “A timber frame milled from the site wasn’t the easiest way to frame a house, but it was something we were committed to. A passive-solar approach told us where to put most of the glass.”

The bedroom is one of the couple's favorite rooms. Like the living space (their other favorite), it has large panes of insulated glass that allow for both natural lighting and expansive views.

The result is a house that “has a very simple plan shape and roof line, and benefits from the efficiency of building up rather than out,” Cook says.

“Buildings, and the systems that go into them, are complicated, especially in a cold climate, like New Hampshire. So keeping a simple vernacular form was important,” she says. “It’s a timber frame, with hemlock cut and milled from the property, allowing for an open [floor] plan and large pieces of glass, which help to make a 1,000-square-foot footprint feel much, much larger.”

The resulting structure is a 2,000-square-foot home and office with three floors (including a partially finished basement that houses Cook’s work space and guest sleeping space that’s being eyed for a future family room), three bedrooms and two full baths.

The couple’s favorite rooms are the open-concept living space and the owners’ bedroom, both of which boast large panes of insulated glass that welcome waves of natural light. From the owners’ bedroom, the couple “were able to view the Geminid meteor shower from our bed through our large, east-facing window. Pretty amazing,” McCullough says. “We’ve also woken up to a flock of turkeys roosting in the trees out the same window.”

To meet established “passive-house” standards, the structure was built with recycled insulation board, layered throughout the roof and walls for a continuous and tight assembly. The couple invested in weather-proofing gaskets and taping around those banks of triple-glazed windows, creating an air-tight house, which in turn reduces energy costs.

“We used a heat-recovery ventilator to introduce pre-heated fresh air,” Cook says. “There is radiant, in-floor hydronic heat in the basement and first-floor slabs—none of which needs to be used unless we are away in the winter, as we primarily heat with the sun and a small wood stove,” Cook says. “The concrete foundation is insulated in the concrete wall with a thermomass system, so you can see the exposed concrete on both sides, which we preferred as architects. There are 14 solar panels on the roof. The house [uses] no fossil fuels, getting us to net zero.”

To make sure the house was built to their exacting specifications, the couple also took on the role of general contractors (taking advantage of McCullough’s experience in the building trades while attending Norwich). This decision gave the couple uncommon control of the build process.

“It helped that we were married but hadn’t had children yet, so we could dedicate a lot of time and effort to the project,” Cook says. “Many of my family members are in the trade, and my brother just happens to be an extremely smart and hard-working carpenter.”

Kolt Cook, of Kolt J. Cook Carpentry in Danbury, helped the couple “with everything from pouring and power troweling the basement concrete slab, installing timber-frame elements, welding steel beams, building custom cabinets, and installing a complicated floating stair and catwalk system. Plus coordinating the installation [of the] radiant, floor-heating system,” Jessica Cook says.

In short, Cook and her husband worked with a number of trusted subcontractors who allowed them to take on the role of contractor with confidence. For most homeowners, however, she recommends hiring an experienced general contractor.

“[Contractors] are worth their weight in gold during the process,” Cook says. “Building something that has never been built before is a long, complicated, expensive process, with a lot of decisions to make and a lot of coordination. The amount of time I spent purchasing the correct size, amount and color of screws alone was astounding.”

Since the couple didn’t have an unlimited budget, they needed to prioritize how best to spend their initial investment. They decided to focus on the building’s shell, using durable materials that would deliver long-term cost savings.

“Active building systems don’t often get a lot of cost consideration but can easily add significant cost,” McCullough says. “Lots of heating zones, lighting control systems, audio-visual systems are more common than they used to be. Our house is very ‘bare bones’ in that regard, which helped the budget.”

However, Cook and McCullough didn’t ignore aesthetics, showcasing the natural woods that were gathered from their property. The boards for the exterior siding came from the extra hemlock left from the timber framing, milled to a 1-inch thickness. The interior boards are eastern white pine, milled next door in New London. The interior walls were finish in a linseed oil with a white pigment, with zero VOCs (or volatile organic compounds). The main stair treads and catwalk floor are also made from local hemlock.

“We love living here and are lucky to have such a good example to show clients,” Cook says. “The efficiency measures we [employed] are paying dividends now that we are home all the time.

“The house as a whole and the consistency of choices that we made as architects are really what make this house great,” she says. “We strive to achieve this for our clients as well. That is sometimes why we might say ‘no’ to a client who is making a choice inconsistent with the original intention of a design, because we know in the end, the consistency is what will make the home timeless.”

That timelessness, Cook says, is central to the very definition of sustainability.

“I always come back to sustainable design, which is what we learned about in architecture school,” she says. “To me, successful sustainable design is something that people will love and protect for their lifetime, and want to pass to the next generation. That’s the most important thing.

“If you make a place special enough that people want to take care of it, you have succeeded,” Cook says. “I see that with my clients. They want to create something that their children and grandchildren will continue to enjoy.” NHH

RESOURCES

Jessica Cook, AIA • Eagle Pond Studio (603) 456-8553 • eaglepondstudio.com

Kolt J. Cook Carpentry • Danbury

“Building something that has never been built before is a long, complicated, expensive process, with a lot of decisions to make and a lot of coordination.”

—Jessica Cook