Six months, 195 tons of stone, almost four thousand square feet of veneer, thirteen columns, five patios, three arches, one outdoor fireplace and a submerged walkway around the perimeter of the pool, the River & Rock House is the realization of a lifelong dream home for an Asheville area entrepreneur and art collector. Everything about the house is meant to harmonize with nature. Huge windows, stonework inside and outside of the house, and a huge boulder that juts through a wall into the master bath (visible in the left foreground of the above image) bridge the gap between the expansive outdoors and the comfortable confines of home. The house emerges from the ground, growing straight from the bedrock. Walls are painted the color of clay, seamlessly integrating the house to the earth.

A central feature of the River & Rock House is a manmade creek that springs from a rocky pool in the middle of a circular driveway. It flows under the driveway and pools again below the front porch, before winding its way under the house and through a beautiful rock garden. Water emerges from under the house through one of three arches built by the Unturned Stone.

The fireplace sits on a patio that overlooks the arch seen above and the stream flowing through the rock garden. The top edge of the fireplace mimics the dancing flames of an open fire on a crisp fall evening.

The circumference of the swimming pool is wrapped in stone: boulders perched atop low walls, stone patios and a submarine walkway. The dark lining of the pool and the trees towering overhead make it feel more like a forest swimming hole than a pool.

The vertical surfaces- walls, step risers and fireplace- of the River & Rock House are built almost exclusively of Daggitt Mountain stone, a very rough and expressive stone, rich with texture and color. The horizontal surfaces- wall caps, patios and step treads- are built of Hooper’s Creek, a very linear and flat stone, with crisp lines and colorful mineral veins.