HOUSE UP ON THE HILL: The Revolutionary HMTX Headquarters

House Up on the Hill tells the story of an important design partnership that represents a bellwether for both the green building movement and regenerative building materials industry. Jason F. McLennan, CEO of McLennan Design and the founder of the Living Building Challenge, along with Harlan Stone, CEO of global flooring manufacturer HMTX Industries, joined forces nearly a decade ago to envision and create a dynamic and restorative headquarters in Norwalk, Connecticut. 

Colloquially known as the House Up on the Hill (or HUOTH), HMTX’s new home base is more than “a place to sit and answer emails,” according to Stone. It is “a house, a place where we gather to create.” The building is many things at once: a collaborative maker space, a community space, an exhibition space, a museum, an office building, and a retreat all under one roof. Completed in 2022, HUOTH is a future Petal-certified, mixed-use building that embodies a low-impact approach to sustainable and passive design. 

Situated on a rocky and forested promontory along the edges of Norwalk, the building’s unusual siting is both secluded and urban. The land’s topography is tenuous; the linear site itself, oriented along a north-south axis, is surrounded by a combination of second-growth forest, wildlife habitat, transit infrastructure, and medium-density commercial and multifamily residential development. Within this distinct context, McLennan and Stone assembled a design team that could rise to the challenge of designing a four-story, 24,000-square-foot building that simultaneously responded to and restored this once-neglected pocket of land.

This book details in depth the collaboration between McLennan and Stone and how their design vision for HUOTH was brought to life. It likewise explores the history of the Living Building Challenge and its impacts to date, as well as the decades-long evolution of HMTX Industries that led the company to become a global leader in corporate transparency, employee equity, and responsible material sourcing. The story of HUOTH is one of these two paths converging; it is a catalogue of best practices, and an examination of what restorative development truly looks like when design visionaries are at the helm.