Omena House II
THE NEXT GENERATION
Fifteen years after DF&A was hired to design a lake house in Omena, Michigan, the owners asked us to build an extension.
We decided to revisit the ideas that made the first house succeed as both a sustainable building and an inviting second home
Both plans boil down to two boxes connected by a breezeway that bisects the house and allows the lake breeze to cool the home passively.
The new home, where the owners will now live, while their children take the original, is an inverse of the first. The main bedroom on the bottom floor (instead of the top) and the ipe and cedar claddings that made each floor of the original home distinct are still there in the extension, but in reverse.
Sustainable design means working with nature instead of against it. Why shut out breezes and let in the full heat of the sun and then install air conditioning? DF&A’s approach to designing a fully sustainable lake house was to begin with common sense and an awareness of the site, and then to augment nature’s gifts with innovative high-tech solutions. The result, featured in Architecture Daily, was the first private residence in Northern Michigan to achieve LEED-gold certification.
This luxury high-rise apartment’s most impressive feature—the impossibly stunning view north toward Central Park through an expanse of glass—is also its greatest challenge for a designer. How to keep the view from dominating and dwarfing the space and its occupants? We decided on a custom mill piece that uses backlighting, texture, and depth to bring the living room back down to human scale and infuse it with warmth, taming the height of the ceilings and the chill of the glass.
Renovating this Chelsea apartment meant reconciling two seemingly competing goals: preserving the “lofty” feel of the space — the spare geometry and the high ceilings —and creating a warm and inviting home. In the kitchen and dining area, we installed dark walnut cabinetry and dropped the ceiling to create a more intimate space set aside from the dining room. The luster of the kitchen millwork is mirrored in the dining area’s brass chandelier, whose angular shape is softened by a warm color and gentle sheen.
