Vergence House by Arch11
Vergence House anchors a sloping site in Boulder, CO, United States with a crisp, geology-driven form by Arch11. The house translates erratic stones and tectonic folds into a layered envelope that mediates between neighborhood fabric and the Flatirons beyond. Here, a complex brief for rest, work, play, and self-sufficiency folds into one near-net-zero residence tuned closely to its immediate terrain.
Light skims across faceted cladding as the house steps with the slope, catching changing shadows through the day. From the street, the volume reads as a deliberate erratic, at once settled into the hillside and distinct from the surrounding roofs and gables.
Vergence House is a house in Boulder, Colorado, conceived by Arch11 as a near-net-zero residence that translates local geology into architecture. The project draws on the concepts of erratic stones and tectonic vergence to organize its skins and massing. Material choices and layered envelopes respond to the hillside site, shaping views, light, and an unusually direct relationship between everyday life and the ground it occupies.
Reading The Geology
Arch11 looks to the region’s erratic stones and folded Flatirons formations as the starting point. The house takes the idea of a glacially transported boulder and scales it up, treating the building as a displaced object set within neighborhood fabric. At times the volume rests quietly against the slope, and at others it breaks from surrounding forms with deliberate contrast and sharper lines.
The notion of geological vergence guides how the exterior surfaces align and bend. Folds in tectonic strata translate into controlled shifts in plane, so cladding reads almost like a slowed stone flow. That abstract reading ties the house back to the larger landscape without mimicking literal rock forms.
Wrapped In A Flowing Skin
A high-tech stone and aluminum composite panel forms the primary protective layer. This skin folds continuously up the walls, across the roof, and at moments into the interior, reinforcing the sense of a single, wrapped volume. Edges turn rather than break, so roof and wall blur into one continuous surface.
Against that smooth shell, textured wood prefabricated panels bring grain, depth, and relief. Set along the exterior, their ridges and grooves catch sun and shadow in shifting bands through the day. The play of light recalls the roughened faces of uplifted rocks behind the site, where strata read as alternating bright and dark lines.
Program Folded Into Form
The brief asks a lot of one house: places for rest, serious work, and play, plus the ambition to produce its own power and even its protein. Arch11 answers by treating the building envelope not as a backdrop, but as active infrastructure supporting daily routines and environmental goals. Surfaces, massing, and orientation work together to reduce demand, then make room for systems that move the project toward near-net-zero energy use.
Inside, the continuity of the outer skin shapes sequences of rooms tuned to light and views. Areas for work look outward to the Flatirons and sky, while rooms for rest sit deeper in the volume, where enclosure and material warmth take precedence.
Texture, Light, And Shadow
Highly textured wood along the exterior amplifies small shifts in sun angle. Morning light traces thin bright lines across the grain, while low evening sun thickens shadows and deepens contrast. The composite panels hold a steadier tone, so the house reads as a layered object with one calm shell and one more animated surface.
That careful calibration of texture turns daily and seasonal change into part of the experience of living here. As weather moves across the Front Range, the building quietly records it in shadow patterns on its folded facades.
By the time the day fades, the house settles back against its hillside, edges softening as artificial light glows from within. Materials that reference distant geological time frame very current questions about how to live, work, and play on a site without overwhelming it.
Photography courtesy of Arch11
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