Glass Act A see-through modern getaway in Lake Geneva plays terrarium by day, and moody manse by night By Lisa Cregan | Photography by Tony Soluri A century ago, Frank Lloyd Wright built his dream home a couple of hours’ drive from this spot on the shores of Lake Geneva where, more recently, Chicago architect Charles (Chip) von Weise built his. But unlike Wright, von Weise didn’t get to move in. No, the role of beaming homeowner is played instead by Chicago attorney Barry Montgomery, who commissioned the house for his wife, Shauna, and their two young children. Von Weise calls the glass-walled beauty “the kind of work I want to do for the rest of my career,” but especially interesting, given his pride in the project, is the fact that von Weise is so quick to credit Montgomery’s input for some of the design’s more exciting features. “Barry’s such a smart, articulate client,” says von Weise. “He’s got great taste, and he actually taught me some stuff.” Te pair spent months tossing ideas back and forth in the pre-design phase, trying and discarding innumerable notions of style, size and siting. “It was great fun,” says Montgomery, “but it might have been easier to build a skyscraper.” In the end, they reached back to mutual childhood memories of East Coast seaside houses—Nantucket for von Weise and the Jersey shore for Montgomery. Tat pointed them to the house’s exterior materials (white clapboard, bluestone and cedar shake). But what shape should they take? Te idea of doing a lake cottage in the local vernacular was under consideration, but the pair was determined to come up with the best possible combination of sunlit rooms and long lake views. Montgomery says he found himself referring again and again to a Florida home that revered modern architect Hugh Newell Jacobson had built for a friend. “Chip pulled out his Hugh Newell Jacobson book, and we were inspired. We didn’t want to do a copy, but that’s how we arrived at this pod design with huge windows.” Breaking the living areas into ‘pods’ allowed von Weise to both bend the house to track the sun and reorient its focus toward a stand of three gorgeous old maples at the edge of the lake. “Te original design was just a two- story volume,” he explains. “Once we placed the house like this, it put the entertaining space on an axis with the view and the light.” To connect the pods, von Weise suggested floor-to-ceiling glass corridors to tie the compound together without ever losing views of the stunning, Doug Hoerr-designed landscape and lake. “An important part of the relationship between the interior and exterior was the landscape. Hoerr had a lot to do with scripting that feel.” Von Weise says it was also Hoerr who had the brilliant notion to plant aspens and grasses inside the ‘terrariums’ created by the crisscrossing corridors. “It makes the project, Opposite page: The foyer is flanked by glass-walled interior “terrariums” designed by architect Charles von Wiese. They are open to the sky and planted with aspens and birch trees. Left: Interior designer Suzanne Lovell says the master bedroom “ties to the house’s white theme, but it’s softer, a snowy haven.” Summer 2009 | | 73
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