CAMPout is a project designed by Faulkner Architects with interior design by NICOLEHOLLIS. A San Francisco family asked us to help them expand an existing property near Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The site sits on a north facing slope and looks down to the Martis Valley and up to Lookout Mountain through a natural screen of 100-year-old Jeffrey pine trees. In our world today, much of the built work is driven by visual appearance. Photography by Joe Fletcher.

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Symbolic forms and arbitrary material deployment remind us of our history. Usually, these collages of comfort for the eye ignore their contexts that should affect the work in a tangible way. Wooden, furniture-like houses built in an ever-expanding migration to the wild lands that are at risk of fire appear to thumb their noses at the danger and the sun and the wind. At CAMPout, comprehensive rigor and consistent deployment of materials based on building-sized decision making instill a sense of calm and connection for the whole assemblage and ultimately the family. The material palette is derived from the surrounding context of basalt boulders and sugar pines that cover the forest floor with a mat of rust colored pine needles. Glazing is limited at the exterior interface with the combustible surroundings and maximized in the courtyard, where the light and screen of the pine forest safely connects with the interior. Dug into the slope, sleeping a...