§ 01 — THE GLASS

Sixteen feet of lake, held in a single slope.

The clients wanted a monoslope roof, so we built the whole house around that single gesture and aimed it at the water. The lakeside wall runs roughly sixteen feet of glass, top to bottom — when you walk in, the lake is the room. Five-foot overhangs cap the upper windows and keep the summer sun off the glass without ever closing the view down.

§ · THE DRAWINGS

Drawn before it was built.

Every move on this house started on paper — the monoslope section, the steel staircase, the way the overhangs and light shelf shade sixteen feet of glass. A look at the drawings behind the build.

basement floor plan

main floor plan

§ 02 — THE STEEL

A staircase built on their own shop floor.

The clients own a steel fabrication company, so we leaned into it everywhere it counted. The staircase came in as four or five fabricated pieces, built in their shop and assembled on site. The fireplace wears ten-gauge steel panels. It’s a lot of custom steel from a single trade the clients happened to own — and it gives the whole house a quiet industrial edge that a wood-framed version never would.

§ 03 — THE FOREST

A forest in the glass, light to the basement.

One of our core moves is using the staircase to pull daylight down to the basement. Here the stair backs onto the screened porch, so we set a fourteen-foot-tall by eight-foot-wide sheet of glass between the two. Daylight filters through it and down the stairwell, and that dark lower corner stops being dark. The clients do glasswork too — so the panel is printed with a forest. It’s a detail we’d never done before, and exactly the kind of thing this collaboration made possible.

§ — THE DESIGN STRATEGIES

One slope, sixteen feet of glass, and how we kept it efficient.

A wall of south-facing glass is a comfort problem as much as a view. Three moves keep it bright without overheating.

Stage 01 · The Monoslope

A single-slope roof organizes the whole house and lets five-foot overhangs shade the upper glass while the view stays wide open.

Stage 02 · The Light Shelf

Five feet of overhang isn’t enough for the lower windows, so the clients fabricated a steel light shelf and we bolted it on — shading the glass the overhang misses and making the building measurably more efficient.

Stage 03 · The Steel Deck

We ran the entire deck substructure in steel, which let us cut the columns that would have broken the view and reinforced the industrial character carried inside.

§ · UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Behind the steel.

The custom steel is the whole story here, and it’s best seen before the finishes go on — the staircase set in four pieces, the deck substructure framed without columns, the light shelf bolted to the face. Here’s the house coming together.

Foundations – July, 2020

Framing – January, 2021

Almost finished – May, 2021

§ — Inside the House