a modern chalet
There is a romance and an abstract beauty to cold weather… especially for a design studio based in LA! So when we got to work on this ‘chalet’ in the Lemont neighborhood of Chicago, where the weather is known by long, freezing and windy winters, we jumped at the idea of creating a modern apparition veiled in snow. Working with existing architecture we redesigned this residential exterior to respond to the beauty of cold weather of the Great Lake region. We kept the dominant lines of the facade with the scaling sloped roof and the glass block vertical beacon and added horizontal slits to manipulate the proportions of the window openings. The result is a streamlined facade with minimal visual clutter. Yeh, that’s a Tesla truck in the driveway ;)
snowflake
It was also important to us to create an effect of lightness for such an enormous house and have the house instead recede into its natural setting. There is something silently heroic in the way this building responds to the very harsh conditions of its surroundings. The siting and the way the structure integrates into the slopes, its fluttering, slanted roof planes almost make it seem as if the ice wrinkled and produced a shelter there. Winter teaches us a vigilance, rigor and resilience like no other season. Winter invites contemplation and a search for meaning and growth.