Whispering Stones, a house in Healdsburg, United States, was designed in 2024 by Swatt + Partners. The design creates a linear form that is made up of transparent and milling volumes clad in local materials to connect it with the northern Californian landscape. “The form recedes into the landscape,” Swatt + Partners said.

On a wooded site north of San Francisco, the project is on a knoll that offers views of the surrounding foothills and the valley below. As a result, Swatt + Partners decided to create a linear form that is made up of transparent and milling volumes clad in local materials to connect it with the northern Californian landscape.
“The underlying design philosophy was not to impose a structure onto the site that would require contorting the surrounding topography,” studio principal Robert Swatt told designboom. “The form recedes into the landscape.”
The three structures that make up the building are laid out linearly, connected through glass-floored bridges covered by volumes above. The blocks step up the incline and have large floor-to-ceiling windows that open onto terraces that allow for views of the hillside.
The windows have thin aluminium frames, while the rest of the facade is clad primarily in concrete, as well as Western Red Cedar and aluminium.
“We selected materials that would both naturally lift out of the ground such as concrete and those that are closest to the materials found in nature,” said Swa...