Situated
on 10 acres near Minneapolis, the grounds of the project include a diverse landscape
of rolling lawns, forests and a pond. This renovation and addition began with
a fifties mail-order house based on the design of Walter Gropius. It’s
simple rectangular form, elegant post and beam construction and minimal detailing
provides an excellent point of departure for design interventions that would
violate this purity, opening it up to the variety of wild environments that
surround it.
The L-shaped ‘houses’ that penetrate the shell are in one case circulation
and in the other case private retreats off the sleeping spaces. Their exterior
color and interior quality responds to the landscape they face, one towards
the forest, the other towards the pond and meadow. The fan-shaped dining/kitchen
space has a ‘lean-to’ roof that covers exposed posts and beams,
vestiges of the original room beneath. This outward-focused shape creates one
large social space that radiates out to land beyond.