Yosemite Cabin Recasts a Tight Plan Into a Family Mountain Haven
Yosemite Cabin sits in California, United States, by Prentiss + Balance + Wickline Architects. The house replaces an aging family retreat in Wawona with a compact monolith carved open to light and mountain views. Designed in 2023, it orients daily life to the surrounding park while handling a tight lot through careful planning and a material palette drawn from the woods.
Pines crowd the roadside as the house comes into view, its dark vertical cladding pulling it back into the tree line. A tall carve-out at the living room cuts light into the compact mass and turns the porch into a lookout for the Sierra.
This is a house in Wawona, inside Yosemite National Park, by Prentiss + Balance + Wickline Architects. The compact form makes sense on a small, park-bounded lot: a tight envelope paired with deliberate erosions, a strategy that expands outlook and daylight without swelling the footprint. The result keeps family life close to the landscape and the materials underfoot.
Carved Living Room
The heart of the plan is a double-height living room carved from the monolith. That subtraction opens a broad face to the mountains, turning an interior volume into a light well while creating a sheltered deck that reads as part of the room.
Wrap Deck And Views
Erosion on two sides yields a wraparound deck that tracks the slope and pulls wind and scent from the pines. Its railing pickets repeat the vertical siding in the same dark timber, setting a steady rhythm that mediates between outlook and enclosure without breaking the silhouette.
Timber Skin, Light Core
Outside, dark vertical wood siding settles the house within the trees, while a lighter tone at the carve-out marks the entry into the sun. That contrast recalls the variegated rock and bark nearby, and it visually anchors the compact volume even as openings pull sightlines to distant ridges.
Stair As Screen
Just inside, a stair turns into a crafted screen of overlapping wood slats, echoing the exterior’s vertical cadence. Thick reclaimed fir treads slide into the slatted field, reading almost like a floating run that screens, supports, and guides movement in one move.
Rooms Aim Outward
Every room finds its own way to the site—each aperture is placed for a distinct encounter with light and topography. The primary bedroom looks to Wawona Dome, a narrow shower window catches the woods in a quick slice, and the landing library tucks a window seat into the canopy like a calm pause.
Late sun lays warm bands across wood grain, and the deck gathers family around views that feel familiar and new. Material choices stay close to the forest, keeping the house durable and at ease while the surrounding trees hold the wind.
Photography by Andrew Pogue Photography
Visit Prentiss + Balance + Wickline Architects
