How a Home Changed the Way We Live | The Whistling Well
We were not simply looking for more space. We were searching for a different way to live one shaped by light, landscape, and wonder.
Little did we know that a house on the Hudson River would reshape our family's daily life and would become a lived foundation for an interior design and architecture studio. It would ground the belief that space shapes how we live.
The Life We Were Living
Raising two young children in New York City felt relentless. I hurried my kids, chasing time. Riding the subway to and from work was my sacred time alone. My partner and I saw each other rarely, and the longing for a pause grew. A vacation would exhaust us. We didn't need more external stimulation. We desired unhurried togetherness.
On a beautiful Sunday morning at the Prospect Park playground, I swung our toddler while my husband kept an eye on our crawling baby. Perhaps it was the shift in weather, the cool October breeze, that stirred something in us. We started dreaming out loud about a different way.
With openness, unlike how we had connected in a while, we each imagined a life in all of its sensations. As though building with blocks, we took turns offering one image, then another, slowly constructing the life we longed for. Like many before us, we had decided to find a weekend cottage upstate, no more than an hour away from Brooklyn, abundant with trees, birds, and animals. We would stay there Friday evening to Sunday evening to recalibrate our senses, so we could be together and be present without hurrying anywhere.
Looking back, what we were really searching for was intentional living. A life at home designed around presence, not productivity.
The House on the Mountainside
The search began that night. By the next weekend, we had appointments to see three properties. The first property, though interesting in design, had a layout that was disorienting. The next property, the realtor warned, had a very steep driveway and had been on the market for almost a year without offers. We turned in, only to drive up half a mountain. Steep was not the word to describe it.
As we parked on the lot behind the house, the Hudson River greeted us. In its beauty and vastness, I suddenly understood why someone might name a child Hudson. The strange thought faded. My senses were activated. I felt alive standing among trees–at some of their roots, yet others’ canopies. The river view was accompanied by bird songs and insects chirping. Rocks around us spanned between trees and as I placed my hand on one, I breathed in deeply. The air was crisp with a taste of dew.
Perched comfortably on that mountainside sat the house. This side offered only a door and no windows. Curious, I handed our baby to my partner and walked in for a quick exploration. I was standing in the living room and kitchen area, overcome. All of the windows–I had found them. Expansive was the glass and immersive was my belonging. I was a bird in a nest up on the trees. Yet a human, protected from the elements. My brain fired and I felt everything. I looked at Ken and mouthed, this is it.
To be clear, this house was not the Banks’ pristine mansion from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Its condition resembled that of the house from My Neighbor Totoro. It also carried a similar kind of magic.
The house was a striking example of residential architecture designed to be fully integrated into its landscape. It sits on the mountain’s rock and grows vertically through six split levels. Taking advantage of the height, the original architect, Charles Winter, sculpted the interior within the outer shell to achieve three-story heights, as well as continuous horizontal glass openings in reverence of the river. He carved space for different small experiences, with the largest being the 600 sf Grand Room, an open layout encompassing living, play, dining, and kitchen that allowed daily life to unfold in one connected space.This layout allowed for the house to curate the togetherness we were seeking while being continuously immersed in the nature for which we longed.
Constructed of wood post and beam, the finished building material included wood ceilings, painted drywall, and wood floors. On the exterior, painted plywood siding sheathed the home. The house’s structure was expressed inside and out. Yet beneath its strong architectural bones and strategic design, the home had grown outdated, felt dormant and stale, with portions of the structure beginning to rot. Inside, the bathrooms’ 1970s melamine peeled, the kitchen’s dark burgundy painted plywood cabinets carried odors, water damage stained wood ceilings, and some of the floors were open to the level below without guardrails. The lighting and electrical systems had to be redesigned and rewired. On the exterior, large areas of damaged siding needed replacing, along with a leaking roof, and a number of columns and beams.
This was no small cottage upstate, and no small project to renovate. The house, however, offered a life we could live nowhere else. It also called for love and care, ready to awaken. After purchasing the property, it underwent a phased home renovation over four year: part structural restoration, part intentional redesign of how the home could support our family's daily life.
A Home That Changed Our Rhythm
For the first year, we spent our weekends at The Treehouse, and after the pandemic, we moved there for good. Every single morning, the piercing sunrises took our breath away. Each sunrise brought a new color palette, and together with our children, we watched in awe as the Hudson River seemed to become a different landscape each day. One morning, our oldest daughter rushed in to tell us, “You have to see! The sky is on fire!” She was not scared, but excited, knowing by now the dramatic ways of our neighbor, the sun.
In the Grand Room, our life narrative unfolded. We shared meals, quiet moments with hot chocolate by the fireplace, talked, and laughed, all in the presence of the forest, the animals, and the endless sky. While we cooked and cleaned, the kids would play on the room’s platform that hovered in front of the trees. The horizontal sightlines framed through the architecture and landscape calmed us. The exterior layered decks were extensions of our living space. Life blurred between outside and in, amid children and dogs. Eyes wide open and breathing deeply, we learned to observe, to look both close and far. The ever-changing views of the river and trees became a living backdrop to daily life, marking the passage of seasons and slowing the pace of the day. Fire crackled during chilly evenings and mornings, and we listened, discussing the visual texture each sound seemed to carry.
In restoring the home, we discovered something unexpected: the house was quietly redesigning us in return. The architecture was shaping our moods, our connection to each other, and the rhythm of every day. We learned to be more present with each other and in the world. We learned to share in each other’s awe and wonder. What started as a home remodel became a reorientation of how we live, gather, connect, rest, and work.
What the House Taught Me About Design
It was in that house that I decided to leave my corporate work and start my design studio, The Whistling Well. My lived experience there conditioned me to claim the truth I had discovered: interior design and architecture are first and foremost about people about how we rest, gather, connect, and live within the spaces we call home. And so, The Whistling Well emerged an interior design and architecture studio grounded in one core belief:
How we live is shaped by the spaces we inhabit.
In the reflections that follow, I'll be sharing more about how space shapes the way we rest, gather, and live — and how thoughtful design can make that possible for any home.
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Written by Milena Bica-Shibata
Founder, The Whistling Well
