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A Contemporary Stone House with a Green Lawn Roof

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What a wonderful crisp contrast. The white framing and the green roof; spliced by a white-framed peephole, spying a pool on the deck below.

The house, set in in Jarabacoa in the Dominican Republic, was designed by VASHO architects to house 18 people comfortably.

The jiggered green roof allows for a clerestory, bringing the cool forest light in from all around.

The roof evolves very softly and naturally out of the hillside slope.

The eco-chic deck offers real immersion in the rainforest setting.

The house is built into the hillside – which cools it to the temperature of the bedrock.

Stones collected from the site itself make a sturdy and low impact building structure.

This stone is not a mere facade, but actually forms both the finished interior and the exterior structural wall.

Each bedroom has its own bathroom and study, while the living room-dining room-kitchen is a generous shared space.

A modest pool at the end of the deck invites one or two guests to lazily idle away the summer afternoons.

The house is designed as a second home for use intermittently through the summer.

For the architects, the greatest challenge was to create a space that comfortably houses 18 people on such a steep section.

The architects’ solution was burrowing the length of the two floors into the hillside – not only creating the maximum of horizontal space, but an ecological retreat that partakes sensibly of its rainforest environment.