>THE NATION>Living Magazine
- August 29, 2024
- 00:05
- 4 minutes reading’
Hear
This story sounds like a fairy tale: it includes an enchanted forest, a wooden house, romance and fawns. But to understand it in depth, we must go back to the origin of the question: How did the project come about? “When people ask me what brought me here, I always say it was love,” confesses the interior designer. Natalia Romero.
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Located in the middle of the forest in Colorado, the house was Natalia Romero’s first project with Robyn Wall.IANDWARREN
“I met my husband, Paul, at a museum in New York in 2010. We started chatting, laughing, having lunch, and staying in touch. A decade later – pandemic in the middle – we got married, and my life in the United States began.”
Natalia Romero, interior designer in charge of the project
After years of working in Buenos Aires with design and decoration projects, betting on love and moving to Colorado meant a new beginning for Natalia. However, shortly after arriving met Robyn Wall at a party with some mutual friends where they immediately found something to talk about.
The house only has a surface area of 3m by 3m, although it was used to the maximum.IANDWARREN
“Robyn has the first house built in the Crystal Park areaa property with a lot of history called Camelot lodge. It is a mountain refuge where hunters slept more than a century ago, with a wonderful natural setting. During a storm a couple of trees had fallen and that created a perfect clearing to build a small house,” says the designer. When Robyn proposed that she join the project she had started alone, Natalia didn’t even respond: she simply sat down to create.
Interior designer Natalia Romero had her life set up in Buenos Aires when she moved to Colorado after getting married. This project was one of her first there. Courtesy of Natalia Romero
“Man-made things cannot be imposed, I wanted to make sure that this natural environment permeated this little house. The challenge was to propose a valuable design that would blend in with the vegetation and the mountain.”
The construction was dry-built using wood, OSB boards and insulation. “She had already started the basic structure with a builder when she called me; she was interested in my vision of the design,” Romero explains. Courtesy of Natalia Romero
The first step was to select the materials they were going to work with, for which They opted for a species of fir native to the area“We chose Douglas fir to clad both the exterior and the interior. Inside it is polished, but outside it has a rougher texture: over time the sun, snow, and rain create a patina that is in tune with the surroundings,” Romero shares.
“The house was a challenge and a great learning experience: when you are immersed in nature, a lot of observation is needed”
Instead of cutting down trees, they were incorporated into the design.Courtesy of Natalia Romero
While Nati sketched proposals and tried to get along with the builders, the homeowner was searching online for opportunities. “Robyn found a place on Facebook marketplace a set of old cedar windowswe decided to take advantage of them and distribute them on different walls so that all the faces of the room faced the outside. That was very important to me, being inside but having connection with the habitat from every point of view.”
In order not to interfere with the materiality of the landscape, the external platform of the little house was built with fallen trees on the same property, without altering the surrounding vegetation.
The roof was made with two slopes but rotated so that its center falls on a diagonal of the floor. The sheets were recovered from a factory by the builder of the work. IANDWARREN
“In my head, a deck was rectangular or square, but here something more organic emerged. Observing nature and seeing how we can elaborate, from the design, means standing in a completely different place,” he confesses. The result was a deck with a shape “similar to the bow of a ship”, a kind of irregular triangle that was built around the trees under the premise was not to cut any.
For the sliding access door, they reused an iron rail found at a fair, which was complemented with a glass panel with a frame made of local fir wood. Courtesy of Natalia RomeroAs the sector had to be protected with non-combustible material, they covered the floor with recovered bricks and the walls with folded raw iron sheets.IANDWARREN
One of the key points inside was the heating, which they solved with a small cast iron wood burning fireplace.
“In the mountains of Colorado, winter is very cold, but this way you can heat the house so you can enjoy it all year round. It is good to have a teapot and some cups on hand to enjoy tea by the fire,” says Nati.
Completing the living room, a mix of woven cushions that harmonize and add warm textures. “I gave myself the pleasure of incorporating an Argentine wool blanket, made by my mother who is a textile artist.” IANDWARREN
The idea was to make the equipment simple and practical.for which two very versatile beds were designed: placed in L they function as a sofa, placed next to each other They serve as double beds, and in the summer they are taken out onto the deck to be used as lounge chairs.“We made them out of the same wood as the walls, trying to make them blend in, and with slightly recessed oriental-style legs so they seem to float and have a lighter appearance,” explains the designer.
“The idea is to not have too much decoration or equipment, so everything has to be as functional as possible.” The handmade linen mats and covers serve a double function: when not in use, they are rolled up to act as a backrest.
“Due to the dimensions, we had the jute rug custom made. I discovered the coffee table at a flea market in California and brought it back in the car. The length had to be adjusted a bit, but it turned out perfect.”Courtesy of Natalia Romero
“As a designer, I love projects where the client contributes, is committed and passionate: this synergy greatly enriches the results,” says Natalia. The cottage was the first of several projects that she worked on with Robyn: “both she and the builder, Ed, put their heart, soul and creativity into it, and it shows.”
“Robyn became a friend, a very important person in this new stage of my life. After the little house we collaborated again on several projects, we always had the same connection,” Romero says.Courtesy of Natalia Romero
As a sort of domestic retreat, this nine-square-meter space came to corroborate that you can escape from the routine without leaving home. Whether you’re going for a glass of wine, reading, picking hazelnuts and mushrooms, or simply enjoying the murmur of the stream running through the forest, the house invites you to put your cell phones on silent and the rest of the world on pause.
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