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In our office, the owners, repeat clients, broached a delicate issue with us. “We want you to design our cabin, but not in the contemporary or modern language we know you prefer. We want it to be northwoods, quaint, and homey. The reason we want you to design it is for the creativity we know you will bring to the project. We really want to work with you again.” For their retreat, they sought the intimacy implied in “cabin,” but they also required a four-season lake home, complete with high-tech connections to his Minneapolis business office. Reconciling the actual project scale with the owner’s desire to maintain intimacy as well as having it seem downscaled within the landscape a became a prime challenge for the project. A traditional Northwoods palette - logs, stones, and cedar shakes - weds the dwelling to the cabin ancestors described by the owners. Beyond this, we optimized habitable space by carving into the roof, essentially creating a story and a half. Second floor rooms are attic spaces, with multiple dormers for light and air. The site’s flood plain precluded pushing the dwelling down into the landscape, so the home’s visual impact is reduced with natural materials, the protection of the majority of site trees, and reducing the scale of many of the building’s elements. Within the home, Northwoods aesthetic informs the great room design vocabulary. We demanded the use of reclaimed douglas fir timbers for the large timber framing in the main space, and agreed with the owners that they should be “huge”. For us, that meant we could save them for reuse again in another 200 years. The timbers, along with the collaborative effort between our office, the owners, and two local metal artisans that produced the iron works in the house, became the main interior design feature for the home. Along with trowelled plasterwork, salvaged pine flooring, and antique furnishings the space has an appropriately crafted, rustic feel. Construction was a collaborative effort between our office, the truss fabricators and erectors, the general contractor and multiple tradesman. Due to our extensive experience as carpenters and contractors, our relationship with outside contractors is generally smooth. We appreciate their concerns, difficulties, and abilities, and can often offer advice and direction without the superior air of the often-maligned “Architect.” Our teamwork prevailed in the project’s completion within a 13-month building period, which witnessed extremely cold temperatures while the central space was built between two largely finished flanking wings, a portion of the project torn down and redesigned at the owner’s request, and multiple design changes made by our office on site. The general contractor on the project came to enjoy the challenge of working with our office, where drawings provide only a starting point. TOP |
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