Located on Lake LBJ, along the Colorado River near Austin, TX, this vacation home serves as the perfect getaway for a fun-loving family. With an emphasis on entertaining, water activities and abundant outdoor living, provide unlimited opportunities.

Builder: Keith Wing Custom Builders

Photography: Spacecrafting

English countryside cottage meets modern agrarian, on this sprawling plot atop the rolling bluffs of southeastern Minnesota.

Builder: G Cubed

Furnishings and Int. Selections: Ruth Johnson

Photography: Chad Holder

Resting quietly along the shorelines of a wooded lake edge, this modern A-frame serves as an escape into nature for the city-dwelling owners. With a modest footprint, warmth and volume are abundant, utilizing natural timbers and exposed structural members spanning the full height of it's dramatic form.

Classic meets modern in this refreshing take on the vernacular Northwoods A-frame cabin. Utilizing a variety of steel panels, darkened clapboard and hints of bright natural cedar, this cabin blends seamlessly into its forested lakefront surroundings.

As avid winter enthusiasts, the owner’s desire for year-long adventure can be realized with this versatile getaway, resting naturally and with ease throughout the everchanging seasons.

Builder: Hill Construction

Photography: Chad Holder

Cropping out from the concrete plinth of its sloped site, the design of this home utilizes cantilevers and large overhangs to express movement throughout its layered elevations. Providing some protection while also setting up the stage for an extensive outdoor living and entertaining area, the long wall draws one up and into the core of the home. Both expressive and calm interiors work in tandem to create unique spaces fitting for this active family home.

Builder: Detail Homes

Interiors: Dwelling Designs

Photography: Spacecrafting

The simple geometry of this dark steel-clad lake home provides an immediate contrast to its warm and dynamic interior volumes. Expansive planes of glass and operable folding wall systems capture sprawling views and direct connections to this unique property bookended by two bodies of water. 

Brought together in a variety of ways, the interior spaces of this home feel inviting and engaged, allowing its occupants to interact within the spaces both inside and out. With a dynamic stairway at its core, extensive custom White Oak millwork and cabinetry tie the home together through materiality, while open glass railings and two-story volumes create visual and spatial continuity.

Overlooking water to both the Eastern and Western horizons, the open center core of this unique lake home provides captivating light and views from dawn to dusk. 

Builder: M & M Home Contractors

Photography: Spacecrafting 

Envisioned as a modern ranch, the Theodore Wirth home rests comfortably on its hillside location. Immediately adjacent to the property, a densely wooded park creates a retreat-like feel during the summer months, while revealing the Minneapolis downtown skyline and its close proximity to the city throughout the winter season. 

Working with the clients, this residence was designed in a way that can easily accommodate gatherings and be used as a place to entertain. Central to the property, a 10-meter swimming pool reflects views of the surrounding structures. In addition to the sauna, the pool house along the western edge provides a sheltered deck area and outdoor kitchen. Reflecting off the expansive south facing windows of the home, the pool helps frame views from within the open volumes of the living spaces. Mitigating street noise from the southern edge of the property, a planted berm adds privacy while further creating a sense of refuge in its semi-urban setting.

Laboring over every material and line, this project is the result of rigorous design and planning with the clients. With a constant requirement for precision, the joinery and timing of materials throughout the home create clean, harmonic spaces that carry one throughout the home. Celebrating a truth in materials, white walls highlight the wide variety of finishes including clear timber, sandstone, marble, cork, concrete, and steel.  

Creating a home with lasting durability and an enduring aesthetic, the varied materials used for the project have been carefully chosen for their natural beauty–drawing a close connection to the raw elements of the earth. Containing the volumes of the home, the striking cantilevered roof plane shields the living spaces from the summer sun while catalyzing the sense of energy and movement throughout the entire site.

Builder: David Strand (Strand Design)

Photography: Josh Grubbs

This urban retreat nestled within a unique wooded Minneapolis lot serves as home to its growing family. Clad in the rich materials of standing seam steel, iridescent brick, poured concrete panels, and natural cedar, the home comes together through a series of rectangular massings. 

Inside, the program of the residence is broken down into three purposeful volumes. A private family wing along the north end of the property is separated by an outdoor living area and utility spaces that give way to the opposing volume containing the main living areas. 

Materiality plays a major role in this design, carried through both inside and out while creating the backdrop for the natural wooded 360 degree views throughout the home. 

Builder: M & M Home Contractors

Photography: Chad Holder and David McKay

Combining the active lifestyle and appreciation of modern Scandinavian architecture of a youthful Minnesota couple, this vacation retreat celebrates its natural north woods environment.

Programmatically, the Northern Lake Home is composed of two primary massings separated by a glass core. Splaying out to the lake beyond and nestled into a natural swale, the public spaces contour along the landscape blurring the distinction between its built and natural environments. The voluminous living areas feature large walls of glass to welcome in the sometimes scarce northern light and capture intimate lake views through the embankment. A glass core converts through its operable glass wall to combine the dining and private lounge to allow a sheltered connection to the woods and lake beyond. The private family area is partially embanked into the landscape and set away from the public area, protecting its sleeping quarters and private spaces from the active lifestyle surrounding it. 

With a subtle darkened exterior material palate, the Northern Lake Home blends into the forested landscape, while white oak finishes provide a warmth to the minimal and crisp interior that allows the surrounding natural environment to be the highlight. 

Photography: Chad Holder

Located on a wooded bluff high above the Mississippi River, this home features majestic views and sunsets over the river valley. Purposeful design and scale creates the perfect scenic getaway.

Builder: Chad Riesgraf Construction

Photography: Spacecrafting

Located on the popular Mississippi River Boulevard, this modern home, clad in stone, steel, and cement board, gets its shape from the unique corner lot that it occupies. A balance of privacy and connectivity to the active neighborhood is achieved through careful window placement, sprawling overhangs, and low-slung walls.

Builder: Detail Homes

Photography: Chad Holder

This home sits proudly along the Mississippi River on land formerly occupied by Ford Motors.  Strategically placed windows provide scenic views featuring historic landmarks, while blending modern scale and features into a primarily traditional neighborhood.

The large expansive panes of glass let in light to the internal volumes and provide views as they interweave between public and private spaces.

The exterior showcases distinct claddings to define the massings, including bonderized metal and brick that relate to the 135 acre former industrial site. As the first single family home to be completed within this new neighborhood, the home connects the beauty of the Mississippi riverside to the bustling Highland Bridge area of St. Paul. 

Builder: Detail Homes

Furnishings and Wallcoverings: Liquidpink Interiors

Photography: Spacecrafting

This single-family residence in the North Oaks community showcases what can happen when projects are well conceived and organized. Utilizing structurally insulated panels, the entire house was framed and wrapped in only six days.

Opening up to the South, the design provides solar heat collection during the winter months, while cantilevered overhangs block out direct light during the summer. Following the sloped grade of the site, the 2:12 pitch of the roof plane falls gradually towards the north, creating a sense of compression and allowing for an intimate interaction with the surrounding wetlands.

Photography: Spacecrafting

Down to the studs, this complete renovation in collaboration with Str8 Modern, brings refreshed glory to its mid-century Golden Valley neighborhood. Maintaining the original feel with low-slung flat roof lines, a playful bridged entry, and oversized skylights, this home further connects to its surroundings through a new bi-fold wall system and large glass openings. 

This project emphasizes a keen sense of attention to detail. Together with their up-scale material palettes, the exposed steel elements, meticulously crafted casework and millwork, hidden doors, and a showcase stairway all come together creating a pint-sized mid-century gem.

Builder: STR8 Modern 

Photography: Spacecrafting

Utilizing the modest footprint of the existing foundation, the Abramson Residence was designed in a way to maximize its tight parameters while still creating open spaces, a dynamic feel, and an unrestricted floor plan.

Working closely with the clients, the overall aesthetic for this project seeks to maintain an expression of new and uniqueness, while also referencing the neighborhood. A mix of modern and rural vernacular, the Abramson Residence is well suited for its northern, Scandinavian-influenced Minneapolis, MN location.

Photography: Spacecrafting

This modern lakeside home was originally wrapped in a mono-tone cedar which had been painted on multiple occasions to help fight weathering and rot. The owners sought to re-imagine the cladding system and adjacent hardscaping, bringing new vibrancy and lower maintenance for years to come. Earthen materials such as corten steel, bonderized metal roofing, limestone, and natural cedar come together to create an engaging collage of shapes, materials, and textures.

Photography: Spacecrafting 

Taking full advantage of its narrow lot, this lake home serves as a family retreat offering four seasons of outdoor recreation and versatile gathering spaces. 

Anchored by the brick-clad living spaces, steel panels wrap the main gabled portion of the home, cut with a series of vertical natural fir planes bringing warmth to the activated circulation areas. Opposing fully operable glass wall systems provide a unique connection to the outdoor spaces by providing a full front to back experience throughout the property. With its playful bridged connection to the main house, a separate vaulted bunkroom serves as a catch-all for the kids' indoor activities. 

This unique design along with its tight lot restrictions work in harmony to achieve a feeling of openness and movement despite its minimally sized footprint, catering to the evolving needs of an active and growing family. 

Builder: Paul Brohaugh

Photography: Spacecrafting

Located on a 6.5-acre apple orchard in Hudson, Wisconsin, this single-family residence creates its views of the planted hillside through a strong split axis, separating the public, private, and outdoor functions. A carful study of the vernacular, agrarian countryside of western Wisconsin inspired the forms of the residence. Incorporating these forms with a mixed use of materials and color palettes, the sprawling elevation creates a structure at the human scale that comfortably rests within the landscape.  With an unassuming façade upon approach, the user is directed through the open gallery revealing the expansive beauty of the orchard. 

Important to our design and building practices, Orchard Hill takes advantage of many passive and active strategies for low-energy design. Structurally insulated panels and spray foam insulation along with triple-pained windows provide for a highly insulated and tightly sealed building envelope. The use of cast in place concrete works to create a thermal mass, delivering additional passive heating and cooling. Along its axis, the open gallery funnels the temperate south-eastwardly winds creating for a protected, breezy, outdoor space devoid of bugs throughout the humid summer months. 

The Rush River Lodge is nestled along the wooded river meadows of western Wisconsin. Envisioned as a modern retreat, the repurposing of the existing barn utilizes new building materials- creating vast spaces and large operable fenestration, blurring the boundaries of inside and out within the context of its lush enviornment.

Maintaining characteristics of the original building, the structure of the barn has been lifted onto a new poured foundation and wrapped with both new and repurposed materials, helping to realize the old and new.

Commissioned for a local painter, this fine arts studio rests within the natural prairie landscape on the outskirts of Hudson Wisconsin. Working closely with the client, this project produces an appeal unique to the artist. Built exclusively from reclaimed material, the studio conjures a strong sense of pentimento- layering materials from various sources both in time and sentiment.

Timber from the historic St. Paul stockyards clad the building while repurposed ductwork from a regional St. Croix home provide the roofing material. Reclaimed from the artist’s grade school, a large steel window allows for ample natural light within the space. Fitting to the quaint appeal of the studio, a wood-burning stove generates heat during the winter months, while run-off water is collected and used in the artist's garden throughout the summer.   

The Jefe Restaurant build-out, located in the historic Saint Anthony Main neighborhood of Minneapolis, MN utilizes the original 1885 architecture of the Salisbury & Satterlee Mattress factory. Providing views of the downtown skyline and Mississippi River, we worked closely with the client and the Heritage Preservation Commission to fully realize the project. 

Creating an open and warm feel, the layout exposes the original timber structure and masonry walls of the turn-of-the-century building. Large Bi-fold windows and doors inserted into the existing openings allows for a direct connection to the patio and brick street beyond. In addition to back-of-house and kitchen design, the unique styling and finishes of the restaurant owner provides an enchanting and intimate environment thematic to its Spanish concept. 

Photography: Spacecrafting

Designed by architect Kerrik Wessel (Wessel Design), the Bussey residence was conceived as a space that is directly tied to the unique natural elements of the property, providing the user with a slow discovery to the qualities of the home and site. Upon approach, the living spaces are guarded by an elongated brick wall, concealing most of the home while establishing a point of entry through a cantilevered opening.

Provided by the L shape of the floor plan, private and public living spaces are separated according to their position within the natural landscape: densely wooded pines and an open grassy meadow respectively. With small window openings to the forest, the bedroom wing remains sheltered and protected, while the main living and kitchen area open to the meadow with full height glass walls and warm material qualities. Separated from the main living areas, a bridged 400sf studio positioned among the pines serves as a workspace for the client.

Having a modest footprint of 1500sf, the relative position of the structure as well as carefully chosen materials further connect the home to its site. Oriented to the south, large windows and overhangs utilize passive solar heating. Iron manganese brick resembles the dark bark of the surrounding pines, while a cork floor throughout the home takes cues from the layered pine needles of the forest floor.

Builder: David Strand (Strand Design)