Letters of Appreciation
Welcome to my 7th article in this ongoing series where each article is both a house feature and a sincere note of gratitude to the people who imagined it. Homes aren’t just structures, they are vessels for our stories, rituals, and sense of belonging. These articles celebrate the homes that teach us something about balance, intention, and the art of living well. Homes featured here are the reason I started Habitat Balance: the place where thoughtful design and mental well-being meet.
Below is my thank-you letter to the creator of this extraordinary cabin.
Out of respect for the architect as well as copyright, this article provides links to the original websites where you can see photos of this project and the other amazing projects the architect has accomplished. Any other project or company mentioned has links provided as well.
Thank You Letter – Ground House 107R by David Fewson
Dear David,
Thank you!
Thank you for building it the way it should be done… as a joint family effort, with the help of the people close to you, and with what clearly looks like a lot of fun along the way.
The first thing that struck me. This place looks effortless. It has that calm, settled quality that makes you think it simply grew out of the ground it sits on (or landed there)… but I know better. I know that kind of effortless is earned. To make something look this simple and this peaceful, you put in the work. You did the hard part so the house never has to show it.
Ground House 107r Feature and Video, The Local Project
A Retreat That Opens to the Size of the Land
What I love most is the honesty of the scale.
It is a small guesthouse, a retreat set into undulating land surrounded by rainforest. On paper, modest, but it does not stay that size. It opens up, until it feels as big as the landscape around it. The openings turn the rainforest into another room. The house breathes outward when you want it to, and pulls back into something intimate when you don’t.
Even though it is technically a guesthouse, I can easily see this as a primary residence. It has everything a person or a couple would need to live well, and nothing they don’t. That is the whole idea I keep coming back to at Habitat Balance. You do not need a big house. You need a house that gives you room when you need it and holds you close when you don’t. Yours does exactly that, and it does it without a single wasted meter.
The House in the Ground, Open on Both Sides
I have been fascinated with underground houses for a long time. Something about the earth holding you, the quiet, the shelter of it, has always pulled at me.
What you built is even better than the underground houses I used to dream about. It sits low in the land, wrapped in earth and cascading foliage, yet it is not buried. It is not closed off. It opens on both sides, so the light and air and the green move straight through it. You get the grounded, protected feeling of the earth around you, and the openness at the same time. You solved the one thing that always worried me about living underground. You kept the shelter and let the light pour in anyway.
The Materials, and Why This House Is Personal for Me
I have to tell you why this house hit me on a level most houses don’t.
In my first year of architecture school, we were given a project with a specific constraint. Design something using concrete, glass, metal, and wood. Those four materials. That was the assignment.
Your house is essentially that assignment, built and lived in and made real. Concrete, glass, metal, and wood, honest and natural, nothing pretending to be something it isn’t. The contrast is the whole point. The cool and the raw of concrete, glass, and metal, set against the warmth of wood and the living green that grows over and around it. Hard and soft. Raw and alive. It is a masterclass in how contrast, done right, creates calm instead of tension.
There are details I can’t stop thinking about. The way the earth and the landscape reflect in the glass as the house opens, so the line between inside and outside almost disappears. The furniture, which came out of the same family effort, so the place is yours all the way down to what you sit on. The bathroom, where a curved wall of tiles plays against all that hard concrete, softening it exactly where you stand most exposed. That kind of contrast says everything about how you think. You know that a home needs its hard surfaces and its soft ones, and you know precisely where each one belongs.
How Ground House 107r Supports Habitat Balance
At its core, Habitat Balance is about the relationship between a person, their environment, and how the spaces we live in quietly shape how we think, feel, and connect.
Your home embodies this in almost every choice:
- Small that becomes big: It opens to the size of the landscape, giving space when needed and intimacy when wanted.
- Shelter with light: Set into the ground but open on both sides, it holds you without ever closing you in.
- Honest materials: Concrete, glass, metal, and wood, balanced by living green, so the raw and the warm hold each other in check.
- Light as a living thing: The way light moves through the house makes you simply want to be in it.
- Built with love: Made as a family effort, which is why it feels so human.
This is what balance looks like. Not perfection, but alignment between how we live and where we live.
Lessons You Can Take From This Home
You don’t need to build your own house from the ground up to take something from this one.
- Let your space open and close. Find one way to make a room expand when you need it, wide doors, a cleared threshold to outside, and contract when you want calm. Flexibility beats size.
- Balance your materials. If a room feels cold or hard, add one warm, living element. A plant, a piece of wood, something soft. Contrast is what makes a space feel alive instead of severe.
- Let the light lead. Notice where light moves through your home during the day, and put the places you rest and gather where the light already wants to be.
- Keep your materials honest. There is calm in things that are what they say they are. Real wood, real stone, real texture. Authenticity is something you can feel in a room.
- Bring people into the making. The warmth of this house comes partly from who helped build it. Let the people you love leave their hands on your space.
The image above is rough concept drawing to show the idea. This is not Ground House 107R, only a sketch of how a home like it nestles into the hillside.
A Note on Building With Intention
There is one more reason this house stays with me. I could picture a home like this somewhere rainy, or somewhere it snows. Set into the ground, open to the weather through glass, warm with wood and green inside while the sky does whatever it wants outside. It has that intentional living feeling all the way through. Nothing accidental. Nothing there to impress. Everything there because it earns its place and makes life better.
That is the kind of home I want to help people move toward, whatever their budget or their walls allow.
Why This Matters
We often think of mental health as something separate from our environment, but the truth is, the spaces we live in shape how we feel far more than we realize.
A home that opens to meet the land. Shelter that still lets the light pour through. Raw materials warmed by living things. A space built by the hands of people who care about each other. These are not luxuries. They are proof that a home can be built to hold you, in every sense of the word.
Ground House 107R gives off one clear feeling, and it is the highest thing a home can offer.
It makes you want to stay, slow down, and simply live.
Final Thoughts
This home left an impression on me. Not because of its size, but because of how completely it commits to being honest, peaceful, and alive.
It made me think about my own path, the materials I fell in love with as a student, the underground homes I used to dream about, and the kind of environment I want to build for myself and my family one day. A place that opens and closes with you. A place built with the people you love. A place that is exactly what it says it is, all the way down to the last honest material.
So again, thank you.
For the work behind the effortless. For keeping it open on both sides and for the reminder that a home can be raw and gentle at the same time.
If this home made you pause for a moment, you’re not alone. Take a second and ask yourself: what would you change in your own space to feel more calm, more grounded, more like yourself?
If you enjoy exploring ideas like this, where design meets real life, consider joining the Habitat Balance Newsletter. Each week I share honest writing, simple lessons, and small ideas you can bring into your own home, all with a focus on mental well-being and mindful living.