The Matchbox House | Naseem Alizadeh

This single family house has four bedrooms, 1,740 sf of conditioned space and a one car garage. The house is on track to receive LEED Platinum Certification. It has a HERS rating of 49 and many "green" features, including FSC wood, reclaimed trim from demolished barns, no conventional turf (no irrigation) and low flow plumbing fixtures. Every area in this house is used (there is neither an attic nor a basement).

The concept for the house is a matchbox (hence the name), in which the four inner quadrants slip past one another within the outer sleeve. The house is meant to read as an urban cottage in the woods and therefore in its approaching elevation it has the geometry of an iconic 4 sided house. To articulate this even more, it is raised on an inset concrete plinth, which expresses the bottom two edges (and therefore fifth side) that would normally touch the ground.