1995
The house is a year round residence for a family of four, set below the crest of a bowl shaped site overlooking a lake. A separate structure provides for a four car garage and pool lounge.The house is set into the hill parallel to the slope of the site so that it is virtually invisible upon approach from the main road. Its full size becomes apparent only once the visi- tor has descended through the house and out into the surrounding fields. The central space of the house is a full height gallery that runs its full length from the entry porch at its highest point down to a framed view of the lake at its lowest point.The ground floor, in addition to the central gallery, contains the living spaces of the house: children's room, kitchen, dining room, living room, family room and library, while the upper floor is given over to bedrooms and exercise room. The ground floor cascades down the slope of the site from the entry, to the dining areas, to the living room and finally into the library in half-level steps until finally escaping out into the landscape. Simultaneously, the rest of the house is lifted up and floats above this.The construction is a brick envelope containing a steel frame structure, and the interior walls are treated as free elements within this shell. Windows are set into the masonry envelope and are developed in a free grid used to isolate independent views of the landscape: a view of the sky through one window, a view of a tree, or the lake in another; independent partial frames rather than one panoramic view. The brick shell opens to the East in one move to receive the morning light.The open lattice-work wood wall that defines the living room and master bedroom at the termination of the gallery's descent is an echo of the "transparent" drying barns of rural Michigan.