Two psychoanalysts in the city had developed a building on their property in Austerlitz, New York, but the experience was difficult. It left them adrift from the both the forested land and architecture as a whole. They came to Brooklyn-based firm Of Possible with an emotive brief: to build something new that would restore their connection to the site and building. The Findling connects the two literally: four 500-million-year old glacial erratic boulders (two of which are from the site) uphold the wood-clad retreat as it floats above a topographic change.
“There’s this old New England wall that was on the edge of the woods, and this beautiful section to that topography. When we saw that, we said maybe the house could float over that wall,” Vincent Appel, founder of Of Possible, told AN Interior. At first, the design team tinkered with timber columns, but pricing was over budget and there was stone below grade. The architects found themselves between a rock and a hard place. Appel then remembered furniture-maker and poet Ethan Stebbins. The Maine-based designer crafts furniture with timber joinery and granite blocks. With two boulders already on the property, the team sourced two additional boulders from a nearby quarry and reinforced each with 1-inch stainless steel pins.
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