House on Lake Okoboji

House on Lake Okoboji. Located in rural Iowa, Lake Okoboji is a part of a glacial lake system surprisingly located amidst endless cornfields, 2.5 hours from the nearest metropolitan area. This allowed for a sense of total privacy within the house itself. Volumetrically simple from the exterior, opaque and slatted vertical Ipe clads a stacked set of spatial tubes (the primary living spaces) that are open to the lake and woods views, but visually closed to neighbors on the sides. We formed the house’s spatial tubes around view axes running through the site, perceptually linking the lake through the forest to the fields beyond. Dense service spaces (“program solids”) fill the remaining volume. This space bounds the primary living spaces while suggesting connections and extensions to the surrounding landscape, lake and sky.

House on Lake Okoboji

As spaces become increasingly intimate, the intensity of color increases as well. Here color becomes equivalent to the Lake that dominates the spatial tubes, providing and autonomous interiority in contrast to the site-oriented "tubes". In addition to the house and site, we were also responsible for all furniture, fabrics and finishes in the house. We selected and supplied most of the furniture, designed window coverings and selected custom fabrics for many of the furniture selections. We designed and fabricated several feature tables for the house, including a custom, CNC-milled cabinet for the master bedroom.

House on Lake Okoboji

Materials & Systems: Wood-frame construction with steel structural frames, cast-in-place concrete walls, blown-in & rigid insulation, and hollow-core concrete slabs. Exterior: concrete, sustainably-harvested Ipe cladding, aluminum composite panels, aluminum curtain walls, windows and doors; Interior: integral-colored concrete topping slabs with in-floor radiant heat, formaldehyde-free sanded/sealed OSB, custom-colored eco resin, polycarbonate, plastic laminate, Baltic birch plywood, painted steel, stainless steel, with commercial & custom furniture & fabrics by the architects.