The Forest House

In the wooded hills outside Portland, a house rises like something grown rather than built, a structure that seems to belong as much to the forest as the trees themselves. This is the Forest Home by architect Robert Harvey Oshatz, a dwelling where walls bend, ceilings flow, and furniture itself seems to sprout from the ground.

Built into a steep slope, the home is often called the “Funnel House” for the way it narrows at the base and then unfurls upward into light-filled living spaces. From below, it looks as though it is rooted into the hillside, its foundation a trunk, its rooms branching skyward like limbs. Inside, that same organic rhythm continues: curves replace corners, windows sweep wide, and sunlight spills across surfaces of wood and glass.

The layout follows a vertical path, each level unfolding like chapters of a story. At the ground level sits a studio—quiet and tucked away, a space for work or reflection. Above it, the children’s rooms are nested in the middle, cozy and playful, while the main living area stretches out further up, opening to the trees through vast panes of glass. At the very top rests the primary bedroom, a sanctuary among the treetops where daybreak feels like it rises inside the room itself.

What makes the house even more unusual is how its furniture is part of its body. Oshatz designed desks, sofas, and beds as permanent features, built directly into the architecture. Each piece follows the same flowing lines as the walls and ceilings, so that the distinction between where the house ends and the furniture begins almost disappears. It is a complete environment, a lived-in sculpture.

From the outside, the Forest Home is nearly camouflaged, its wood siding and curved forms blending into the canopy. From the inside, it feels like inhabiting a forest dream—an airy spiral of rooms that stretch upward, a vertical journey from earth to sky. More than a house, it is an experience: of living with the trees, not just among them, and of architecture that listens to the land.