Design

Overview

Talkeetna Mountains from Great Room Window

The design for Octahome evolved over a decade of living in Southcentral Alaska, where winters are long and dark. The two priorities that underlie the design are light flow and energy efficiency, with an orientation for views that diminish the distance between inside and out. 

Throughout the year, light flows through the timber-framed, octagonal great room from dawn until sunset. The many large windows that allow light in also provide stunning views of the lake and nearby Talkeetna Mountains, while also contributing significant solar heat gain. To conserve heat, triple-paned windows were installed throughout the house. 

The daylight basement is on a monoslab foundation with 9.5-foot concrete walls poured into foam forms with 5" of polystyrene insulation. Most of the remainder of the building envelope is built with SIPs (structural insulated panels), offering superior insulation with R-24+ walls and R-47+ roofs. Efficient radiant heat in the slab and throughout most of the main floor ensures a comfortable climate inside during extreme outside temperatures.

The entire house reflects an ecological aesthetic, beyond the reliance on passive solar heating and solar electric panels. The spruce timbers that define the great room's wonderful feel were milled on the land from trees cut down to clear a path for the driveway.

Window sills and vanity counters are hand crafted from birch, again milled on-site. Tile and solid birch and teak floors predominate, along with sustainable carbonized bamboo that floors the great room.

While ecological and aesthetic aspects of design are fundamental with this house, there is abundant practicality as well. The owner created the design, but it was rendered into a construction plan by a talented building designer in Anchorage, David Seymour. That plan was then extrapolated into a structural insulated panel (SIP) design by Premier Building Systems, one of the nations best SIP producers. Unlike many houses in this region, every aspect of construction was monitored and certified by an inspector, John Hill of Lynn Lake Home Inspections. Practical, like the fire-proof fiber-cement (Hardiplank) siding with a 25-year stain guarantee, or the 50-year shingles on the roof.

Spatial Considerations

The Octahome was built to provide a home for a couple and their two children, and it was used briefly as a three-bedroom house; but there is much flexibility in the design. 

The main floor of this home occupies 1320 of the 3200 total sq. ft., and provides a total living space. You enter the main floor through a generous Arctic entryway, and as you step through the front door you can immediately see directly through the building to the Talkeetna Mountains view. If you look behind you through the entryway windows, you see the mighty Alaskan Range through the trees. Some may call this feng shui.

Passing through the ample dining room from the entryway, a tile border provides a virtual separation from the octagonal great room, which features a cook’s kitchen fronting on an expansive great room. 

The main floor also contains the master suite, with bedroom, bath, walk-in closet and office/nursery, and a half-bath.

Stairs opposite the dining room lead up to an expansive 20' x 24' space that was used as a library, guest bedroom and yoga studio. This space is wired for and could become a home theatre. Yet plumbing is in place to install a bath if a future owner would desire to divide the space into two bedrooms or make a grand master bedroom. 

Near the arctic entry, stairs lead down to the daylight basement, which holds a recreation room, two bedrooms that each have doors leading outside, a full bath, a laundry alcove, a garage/workshop, and a root cellar/cold room. One bedroom's closet is plumbed for a kitchen sink, affording the possibility for conversion into an independent in-law or rental apartment at ground level.