Sweet spots: three tasteful explorations into the meaning of a second home

Residential Architect, July, 2004 by Shelley D. Hutchins, Meghan Drueding

practical magic

Peter Bohlin had plenty of time to contemplate the details of this Lake Michigan summer vacation and winter weekend cottage. The clients commissioned it 12 years ago and then decided to wait until their youngest child was off to college before building. Bohlin and project architect, Karl Backus, relished the opportunity to revisit the original design and reconsider the clients' original request. Says Bohlin, "The owners found summers spent in the area to be magical, and they wanted to recreate that feeling."

Overlooking Traverse Bay from the western shore of Old Mission Peninsula, the eight-acre site is a wooded wonderland. The unscathed acreage is a place that sparks curiosity and urges exploration. In response, Bohlin felt that the house too should be about discovery. At the same time, the building needed a down-to-earth quality to withstand northern waterfront weather while housing from two to ten people in modern comfort. "We took those aspects that were familiar and loved from old cottages and distilled them all into a more Modernist form and building," he says. Meanwhile, the building process itself uncovered opportunities to incorporate personal touches in the design.

At the entry, guests encounter a column, splayed like a partially open umbrella, anchored to a boulder culled from the site. Inverted versions of the column appear on the back porch to support a peaked overhang. Inside the house, near the hearth, a gnarly old maple (rescued from county chain saws by the client) stands in rough-hewn opposition to the sleek columns fore and aft. A stairwell brings the outside in, channeling southern light toward the entry, and the full-width covered back porch draws the inside out, with shallow steps that fan out toward the water's edge.

The northern Michigan shore is chilly year round, so the floor plan builds activity around a central chimney, which embraces a fireplace and a wood-burning stove. Bohlin used a basic four-square layout, positioning rooms symmetrically around the cast concrete monolith. Exposed Douglas fir framing and paneling echo the raw texture of the chimney's stacked concrete planks--and the lack of finishes means durability with little maintenance in the harsh climate. The chimney pushes through the steep roofline and splits in two. Galvanized metal roofing, sturdy against passing storms, reflects the patterns of the changeable sky.

All beautiful and practical resolutions to the program. But one puzzle nagged at Bohlin over the lengthy design hiatus. "I had thought about the stair over the years--how to humanize it," he says. Both clients are graphic designers, so Bohlin eventually convinced them to design cutouts that would personalize the railing and play patterns in the sun. After 12 years, it was the last piece to fall into place. And it did, with magical results.

project:

Condon Residence, Traverse City, Mich.

architect:

Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, Seattle

general contractor:

Golden Rule Construction, Traverse City

cabinet/millwork maker:

Norris Woodcraft, Traverse City

project size:

2,400 square feet

construction cost:

Withheld

photographer:

Dan Bibb, except where noted

vested interest.

Geoff Prentiss, AIA, had a very good reason to make this weekend cabin in Washington state's San Juan Islands a project he'd feel proud of. He can see the house from his own cabin, which lies right across the water on a neighboring island. The Seattle-based Prentiss, who's vacationed in the San Juans his whole life, found himself intrigued by the challenges his client's wooded site posed. "The problem here was that the lot was north-facing, so the house wouldn't get a lot of light," he says. "We also had to make it durable so the owners could rent it out for most of the summer. And they asked for some flair." The clients' lean budget added another wrinkle to the situation. Labor in the San Juans is very expensive, so the less complicated and time-consuming the house was to build, the lower the costs would be. "The owners wanted a gable-shaped building when they came to us," says Prentiss. "I told them a shed roof would be less expensive and more interesting." They agreed, and the resulting roof sits atop a simple rectilinear box that holds a blissfully basic floor plan. The master suite takes up the east end of the house, abutted by a bedroom lot the owners' teenage son and a hallway lined with bunk beds for more sleeping space. An open kitchen and living area fill the home's window-lined west side.

Low-key materials complement the laid-back plan. Sealed 2-by-4-foot fiber-cement panels, which the contractor sawed down from standard 4-by-8 sheets, cover the exterior. Behind them is a protective rain-and-ice Membrane--"fancy Saran wrap," as Prentiss calls it. The custom Douglas fir--framed windows were a permissible luxury, since most were cut to the same 2 by-4-foot size to keep costs down. Also custom are the metal shelf brackets used throughout the house; Prentiss realized he could have them crafted for less money than they'd cost at The Home Depot. Floors and ceilings of sealed birch plywood bounce daylight around each room.