On Washington’s Blakely Island, Wittman Estes has built a 400-square-foot guest house around an architectural question that goes back much further than the current tiny-house boom. The studio cites Thoreau’s Walden Cabin alongside Le Corbusier’s Cabanon, the compact retreat completed at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in 1952. The latter offers the more specific design lineage.
Fondation Le Corbusier describes the 15-square-meter Cabanon as an ‘archetype of the minimum cell,’ a tiny timber interior developed according to the proportions of the Modulor and compressed around the essentials of a summer retreat.
Wittman Estes takes that interest in compression into the forests of the Salish Sea, where its Blakely Island Cabin occupies a 16-by-20-foot footprint between a large glacial erratic and a mature Douglas fir. Inside, a Murphy bed folds into the main room. The kitchen slips beneath a 115-square-foot loft with two bunks, while the bathroom occupies the northwest corner with a glass-to-glass window facing the trees. All together, the main level and loft bring the guest house on stilts to 400 square feet.
images © Andrew Pogue
a minimum interior opens toward the salish sea
The Blakely Cabin replaces an earlier shack on the site, and the architects at Wittman Estes use its footprint while lifting the new structure above the steep terrain on slender supports. A suspended metal walkway threads through the woods from the uphill side, reaching the cabin at grade before the ground falls away beneath it. The glacial boulder sits just inches from the building, close enough to enter the view from the living room, while the elevated floor leaves much of the rocky terrain below exposed.
Le Corbusier gave the Cabanon two small windows, one facing the Mediterranean and another framing an old carob tree. Wittman Estes approaches the edge of its own minimum interior from another direction. Large sliding glass doors open the main room toward Thatcher Bay and onto a cantilevered terrace, so the 400-square-foot plan borrows much of its sense of space from everything beyond its walls. The Murphy bed faces east toward the morning light, and the same floor decking continues through the glass toward the exterior.
Wittman Estes sites the 400-square-foot cabin between a glacial erratic and mature Douglas fir
prefabrication connects two very different cabins
The Cabanon reference becomes more interesting again in the way the cabin was made. Le Corbusier had the wooden components of his retreat prefabricated by Corsican carpenter Charles Barberis in Ajaccio before they were assembled at Cap Martin.
For Blakely Island, access posed another version of the same logistical problem. Heavy construction equipment was difficult to bring onto the remote shoreline, so much of the new cabin was fabricated at the contractor’s yard in Everett before traveling across the water by barge.
Grid-organized steel frames support the wood volume and land on a minimal point foundation. Around them, Western red cedar milled from trees on Blakely Island forms the exterior cladding and is intended to weather with exposure. Birch plywood warms the walls inside, where fir beams remain visible overhead. At the center of the main room, a suspended black fireplace rotates 360 degrees so it can face the interior or turn toward the terrace when the doors are open.
slender supports lift the compact timber volume above the steep rocky terrain
from the cabanon to a floating forest room
Seasonal changes alter the cabin far more dramatically than its compact footprint might suggest. During warmer months, the glazed wall can slide away and turn the terrace into an extension of the room. Colder weather closes the volume around the fireplace while keeping long views through the glass toward the water and surrounding forest. The architecture stays deliberately small through both conditions, with furniture, storage, and sleeping space working within the same limited envelope.
The connection to Le Corbusier ultimately feels strongest as an investigation of sufficiency instead of an exercise in formal resemblance. The Cabanon compressed inhabitation through dimensions derived from the human body; Wittman Estes gives its contemporary version a little more room, then uses folding furniture and openings toward the landscape to stretch that space perceptually. Seventy-four years after Le Corbusier’s 1952 retreat, the ‘minimum cell’ remains a productive starting point. On Blakely Island, its walls simply open much wider.
a suspended metal walkway threads through the forest toward the cabin entrance
the Blakely Island cabin draws from Le Corbusier’s 1952 Cabanon and its idea of the minimum cell
sliding glass doors open the main room toward the Salish Sea and cantilevered terrace
the compact kitchen fits beneath a loft containing two additional bunks
a Murphy bed allows the central living space to shift between sleeping and gathering
project info:
name: Blakely Cabin
architect: Wittman Estes | @wittman_estes
location: San Juan Island, Washington, USA
area: 400 square feet (37 square meters)
photography: © Andrew Pogue | @poguephoto
design principal: Matt Wittman
project team: Brandon Patterson
landscape designer: Jody Estes
builder: East / West Custom Builders
structural engineer: J Welch Engineers
environmental consultant: Biohabitats
arborist: Seattle Tree Care
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