Riverfold House
Location: Bend, OR
Project Partners
Architect: Hacker
Builder: KNCC
Landscape Contractor: Botanical Developments
Photography: Jeremy Bitterman
For a long time, the owner was drawn to this particular stretch of downtown riverfront, where the land meets the water with a strong sense of permanence and where a basalt outcrop anchors the site to the larger landscape. When the opportunity came to make it their own, the decision was to remove the existing residence and create a forever home that could sit gracefully on one level, closely tied to the land, the bluff, and the river beyond.
These courtyard alcoves also help define a sequence of outdoor rooms that support daily living and entertaining. At the front of the house, the entry is shaped as a protected and welcoming space that draws visitors inward. Elsewhere, an enclosed dining terrace creates a place for gathering, outdoor meals, and barbecuing, while the larger patio off the living space opens toward the river with a fire pit, seating, and broad views across the bluff.
From nearly every point within the home, there is a visual relationship to the landscape, whether intimate and enclosed or expansive and open to the river corridor. The street frontage was designed to feel warm, layered, and secure. Planting beds with seasonal interest soften the architecture and add depth to the approach, while walls that shift in height and alignment create an entry experience that feels sheltered without becoming closed off.
The material palette reinforces the house's contemporary character while maintaining a warm, tactile quality. Board-formed concrete walls, Corten-clad terracing, wood-slat benches, and refined concrete paving with subtle inlays contribute to a design language that feels linear, restrained, and site-specific. Integrated lighting, including wall washes, tree uplighting, path lights, and stair lighting, extends the landscape experience into the evening and adds another layer of depth and atmosphere.
What makes the Riverfold House distinctive is the way it settles into the site. The basalt outcrop remains present throughout the experience of the home and landscape. The terraces move through it, the planting frames it, and the architecture opens toward it and the river beyond. The entire composition is shaped by the idea that the site's most powerful parts were already there, and that design's role was to amplify those qualities.
From the outset, the design was guided by a desire to celebrate the most defining elements of the site: the native basalt and the river. Every move in the landscape was intended to support those features rather than compete with them, allowing the architecture and site to feel inseparable. The result is a home that feels grounded in its setting, with a low profile that sits within the natural topography and strengthens the connection between indoor living and the surrounding landscape.
In collaboration with Hacker Architects, the landscape design responds to an architectural concept organized around framed views, spatial rhythm, and a continuous relationship to the outdoors. The house is structured by a central hallway that terminates in views to the landscape, while a series of courtyards and alcoves bring light, planting, and outdoor space into the core of the home. Rather than treating the landscape as something beyond the walls, the design pulls it inward so that each room feels connected to cultivated outdoor spaces, accent plantings, and moments of quiet enclosure.
This same language of walls continues on the river side of the property, where it helps organize the steep grade change from the bluff down toward the water. That descent to the river became one of the most important opportunities in the landscape design. At the top of the bluff, the main outdoor living terrace serves as an overlook and gathering space. From there, a sequence of terraces, retaining walls, and stairs moves carefully through the basalt outcropping and down to a large lawn at the river's edge.
This lawn, retained from the previous residence, remains an important space for entertaining and open recreation, while the journey to it becomes part of the experience of the site itself. Equally important was the need to balance use of the riverfront with the ecological demands of the site. In response to local overlay requirements and riparian conditions, portions of the lower landscape were replanted with water-sensitive and riparian-appropriate material. This restored planting zone helps stabilize and naturalize the river edge, while also creating a softer buffer from adjacent properties and giving the backyard a greater sense of privacy and intimacy.
