Six Minutes From Woodstock

Amin Tadj Studio builds a near-Passive House courtyard home in Glenford, NY — three timber-clad volumes, a central court, and European-grade finishes six minutes from Woodstock.

A particular fantasy circulates among design-literate New Yorkers; the upstate house that does not compromise, the escape that actually looks like the person who escaped. Ohayo Mountain, a new-construction courtyard home on 2.22 wooded acres in Glenford, New York, designed by Amin Tadj Studio to near-Passive House standards, is the closest realisation of that fantasy currently on the market. It sits six minutes from Woodstock and two hours from the city, and nothing about it reads sterile.

The house takes the form of three distinct timber-clad volumes arranged around a central outdoor courtyard — the organising idea of the entire project. Thermally modified Finnish Lunawood wraps the exterior without chemical finish or maintenance requirement. Inside, polished concrete floors run through the main living and dining area, where exposed cross-laminated timber rafters — produced in New York and engineered to match the distinctive roofline, with individually custom-fabricated joist hangers for every unique angle — meet a high-performance Stuv wood burner capable of generating 120,000 BTU. 

New construction, yes — but nothing about it reads sterile. This is the kind of architectural home your architect wishes they lived in.

Full-height doors open directly onto the court, where a rock garden, stone stairs, and fresh plantings make the transition genuinely inviting. Custom cabinetry from Reform CPH defines the kitchen. Bedrooms carry white oak hardwood floors sourced from Belgium. Bathrooms are finished with Japanese tiles and solid oak vanities designed in France, with heated radiant floors controlled by wifi. The primary suite occupies its own wing entirely, private and quiet, with direct court access.

The infrastructure is as considered as the architecture: fully all-electric, PV-ready, European triple pane windows, two-zone energy recovery ventilation, central heat pump. Below grade, a flexible media and guest room functions equally as home office or screening room. An EV-ready garage completes the lower level.

The grounds add a further dimension. The 2.22-acre parcel slopes gently north to south, a creek running along the western boundary. A heated eighteen-by-thirty-eight-foot pool set in stonework anchors the outdoor space with the seriousness most new builds avoid entirely. Stone and gravel walkways are already in place.

Alongside the listing, Available Items — the Tivoli design shop and gallery — partnered with Amin Tadj Studio to present twenty-one works by independent Hudson Valley artists and designers throughout the house and grounds, under the name Sense of Place. The works are bound, in their words, by the mark of the hand, a playful sense of craft, and an inversion of traditional materials and forms. The house, it turns out, was already that kind of building.

Key takeaways

• Ohayo Mountain is organised as three thermally modified Finnish Lunawood volumes arranged around a central outdoor courtyard that functions as the home's social and spatial core — full-height doors open directly onto it from the main living area, primary suite, and guest bedrooms, making the transition between inside and outside continuous rather than occasional.
• The construction quality reads more European than typically upstate: cross-laminated timber rafters custom-fabricated in New York, Reform CPH kitchen cabinetry, Belgian white oak floors, Japanese tile bathrooms with French solid oak vanities, heated radiant floors controlled by wifi, and a fully all-electric PV-ready infrastructure with European triple pane windows and two-zone energy recovery ventilation.
• In partnership with Tivoli design shop Available Items, Amin Tadj Studio presented twenty-one works by independent Hudson Valley artists and designers throughout the house and grounds under the name Sense of Place — positioning the property simultaneously as architectural object, design gallery, and community platform for the region's flourishing contemporary craft scene.