When Jesse and Betsy went looking for more space on their Portland, Maine property, zoning gave them one option: build on the same long, narrow footprint as the rotting pool house it would replace. Six years after renovating their 1960s ranch house, the couple wanted a versatile studio that could serve every member of the family — a workspace for Betsy, a garment designer and fiber artist, plus a guest house and hangout for their teenagers. The result, designed by Kaplan Thompson Architects and named Super Studio, packs all of that into 360 square feet.
The interior does the heavy lifting. Solid walls hug the workspace for privacy and double as anchors for wall-mounted storage, while the ceiling slopes down toward the studio’s southern end into a more intimate gathering space with playfully angled lines. Holding it together — literally floor to ceiling — is eastern white pine. Interior paneling was sourced locally from The Wood Mill of Maine, with lengths of eastern white pine spanning up to 16 feet to reach from floor to ceiling, creating visual warmth from a material that doubles as a natural insulator.
Non-toxic wood fiber insulation, made from sawdust and wax, partners with triple-glazed windows to further guard against extreme weather, and during winter the interior reaches 70 degrees with no heat running at all. For a single-story studio with no excess square footage to spare for mechanical systems, that’s the wood doing double duty: finish material and thermal layer in one move.
EWP isn’t a long-distance specification here — it’s local stock, milled by a regional supplier, used both for structure-adjacent insulation and as the visible, touchable interior surface. The build became a family affair as it neared completion, with Jesse, Betsy, and their kids finishing the space together.
Super Studio won’t make headlines for scale. But for architects and builders weighing what a small, sustainable, regionally-sourced softwood build can actually do — for thermal performance as much as for character — it’s a clean case study. Full project photos are available on Kaplan Thompson Architects’ website.
Photographer credit: Jon Reese
