When developing a view property for human hab-itation, it’s a relief to see only minimally invasive surgery performed. Indeed, Johnsen Schmaling’s APW house on Lake Charlevoix in Michigan is almost laparoscopic in its approach to building on the site. The light touch is a firm trademark, but these worldly clients fully embraced the twin goals of seeing more of the lake and less of the house.
Charlevoix Residence
Breathing Room
“Our clients reside in Warsaw, Poland, and met at the University of Chicago, so they have a Midwest connec-tion,” says Brian Johnsen, AIA. “They have a place in Chicago and two kids—one in college and one out. They were looking for a place on a lake to get away from the hectic city and bring the family together.“We had been talking with them since 2018, but they were not in a rush. They were looking for meaningful ar-chitecture in the Midwest. They had looked all around the Great Lakes but couldn’t find what they were looking for. They have an eye for design—and not just architecture.”Part of their challenge was that lake houses typically have expansive programs, constrained site sizes, and neighbor-ing structures looming over them. The resulting squeeze pushes the building height and lot density as high as codes will allow. Everyone gets their view of the lake, but at the cost of privacy, quiet, and connection to any other aspects of nature. “Our clients felt most areas were too congested and overbuilt,” says Brian.
About 5½ hours’ drive from Chicago and another couple of hours to the Canadian border, Lake Charlevoix is an inland freshwater lake with 56 miles of shoreline that weaves its way into Lake Michigan. Even here, though, the firm’s clients could not find an existing house that suited their refined aesthetics. “There’s a lot of ill-defined archi-tecture that litters the lake,” Brian explains. “Stuff done in the ’80s by the local builder with an architect on staff.” What they did find, however, was a large, buildable parcel along the lake and they already knew the perfect firm to deliver on their vision.
“They ended up venturing into Northern Michigan and found pristine Lake Charlevoix.”
Natural Fit
FitJohnsen Schmaling offered that magic mix of Midwestern bona fides (Brian grew up in Chicago and got his Master’s in Architecture from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and European sensibilities (Sebastian Schmaling is from Berlin, with a degree from the Technical University there, and master’s degrees in Architecture from Harvard and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee). The firm understands—intellectually and intuitively—how to employ Modern architecture to curate views—even where there’s nothing much to look at but a flat, wooded site. Here, the woods meet the lake, and the long, low-slung house the firm designed paces that transition. Placed broadside north to south and facing west to the lake, the house conceals and reveals the landscape with a syncopation of solids and voids.
“There’s a winding drive you take to get to the property,” Brian explains. “And you go through a number of different ecosystems. You pass through more deciduous-type trees to evergreens, and then the view unfolds to a clearing and there’s an eye shot to the lake. With this stretched out linear organization, we were trying to maximize the transparent midbody of the house to reveal the shoreline and the horizon in the background.” This is the breathing room everyone sought for the house, and the experience the clients hoped for when leaving be-hind their lives in the city. “We had talked a lot about their program and how they wanted to live in the house. Then we showed them several schemes,” Brian recalls. “This was the first one we showed them. And for her, it was instantaneous. She told us, ‘I absolutely fell in love with this, and this is the one we’re going ahead with.’
“She was focused on aesthetics and his attention was on quality. So, it started with her, and then it handed off to him as construction got underway. He had built in Poland with European craft and materials,” Brian says. Despite the difficulties in finding the right place to build, the clients’ program was straightforward. They wanted four bedrooms—one for themselves, two for their visiting grown children, and one for guests—plus a great room for bringing everyone together. Unlike many American houses, there are no redundant spaces. The only indulgence is a small second-floor “ob-servatory” that can flex as office or lounge space. It takes in the lake view, of course, but also long views across the planted roof to the woods beyond.
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