When developing a view property for human habitation, 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.
“Our clients reside in Warsaw, Poland, and met at the University of Chicago, so they have a Midwest connection,” 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 architecture 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 neighboring 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. “They ended up venturing into Northern Michigan and found pristine Lake Charlevoix.”
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 architecture 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.
Natural Fit
Johnsen 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 behind 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 “observatory” 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.
“It’s a very water-centric house,” says Brian. “The living zone takes advantage of the lake views and is semi-emersed in the wooded topography. It’s the interstitial space bridging the boundary between land and water.”
Gale Forces
As peaceful as the lake appears on a quiet day, this is Michigan, and any house on the water must withstand a daunting array of extremes. “We’ve since visited when snow drifts were up over the house,” says Brian. “But we’ve been exposed to this our whole careers. The further north you get in Wisconsin and Michigan, the houses are victims to all sorts of weather. We have gale force winds. And windows have to stay sealed or we get snow blowing through the weather stripping.”
Made in Germany, the window wall systems in APW House are triple glazed. The water view (and some of the worst weather) is due west. A precisely calculated overhang protects the glazing and shades summer sun, while permitting winter sun to penetrate into the house. An adjacent rain garden within the lake-facing terrace absorbs roof runoff. “The green roof also minimizes runoff and helps with energy efficiency,” Brian adds. “And provides year-round visuals.”
A hydronic system heats the slab-on-grade floors, and there’s a forced air system for back-up. (The owners hope to install a solar array in the future.) Meanwhile, those lift-slide window walls open east and west, allowing natural ventilation to cool the interiors in summer.
Wood ceilings and built-ins in the living area and kitchen impart a sense of warmth to the interiors, aided by a board-formed concrete fireplace visible from every angle of the great room. The low-maintenance exteriors mix thermally modified poplar siding and crisp-edged zinc, in keeping with the prevailing somber tones of the surrounding forest and the lake on an overcast day.
“We always handle the landscape on our projects, and we think about it and nature as other ingredients in the materiality of the houses we design. A lot of people have the preconception that Modern has to be cold and sterile. We like a nice balance of cleanness and fineness with a degree of warmth to balance it,” says Brian.
“This house is wrapped in a wood blanket, and everything else is the ever-changing landscape. The transition of fall to winter, spring to summer—and that’s much more dynamic than anything permanent in the house.”
APW House
Charlevoix, Michigan
Architect: Brian Johnsen, AIA, and Sebastian Schmaling, AIA, principals in charge; P.J. Murrill, project architect, Johnsen Schmaling Architects, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Builder: PMGC, Traverse City, Michigan
Project Size: 5,070 square feet
Site Size: 3.5 acres
Construction Cost: Withheld
Photography: John J. Macaulay
Key Products
Cabinetry: Custom
Cabinetry Hardware: Schlage
Cladding: Cambia Wood; Rheinzink
Cooking Ventilation: Zephyr
Cooktop/Range/Ovens: Wolf
Countertops: Neolith
Dishwasher: Miele
Entry Doors/Windows/Window Wall Systems: NanaWall
Fireplace: DaVinci
Garage Doors: Super Sneaky
Microwave Drawer: Sub-Zero
Refrigerator: Sub-Zero
Roofing: Johns Manville membrane roof; Hanging Garden vegetated roof
Thermal/Moisture Barriers: Huber ZIP System
Underlayment/Sheathing: Huber ZIP System