Craryville, Hudson NY

Poet´s HIll

Built: 2013-2014

Photos: Naho Kubota

Design Team: Daniel Holguin, Maya Nakamura, Clàudia Amías, Joan Batlle, Luis Bellera, Adriana Campmany

Poet´s Hill House is one of three structures situated on a 12-acre landscape overlooking the Hudson Valley. Multiplicities approached the project as both an act of restoration and subtraction, preserving the original 1820s guesthouse while carefully removing the layers of additions introduced during the 1960s and 1970s. This process revealed the clarity and proportions of the original structure, allowing its relationship with the land to re-emerge.

In a decisive gesture inspired by Gordon Matta-Clark, the west façade was strategically cut open, transforming the house into a frame for the surrounding landscape. This intervention opens expansive views toward the Hudson River, bringing light, movement, and seasonal change deep into the interior spaces. The house re-engages its setting—an environment once celebrated by the Hudson River School painters—reconnecting architecture, history, and landscape through a precise and contemporary architectural act.

The guesthouse is oriented toward the western sunset and a southern garden, where a new semi-olympic lap pool, summer kitchen, and deck extend domestic life into the landscape. The main house is similarly carved from its west wing to fully open views toward the valley, creating a new deck and garden spaces that blur the boundary between interior and exterior. Completing the ensemble, the existing tool shed is transformed into a Finnish sauna, reinforcing the project’s ethos of adaptive reuse and intimate connection to nature.