This Facetta House is a private hearthstone located in a postwar exurb on Milwaukee’s north reinforcement, its volume precisely bedded in the point’s gently leaning silhouettes and cradled by the mature trees and thick green lining the property’s edges. The possessors, a professional couple with busy work schedules, asked for a house that would accommodate their disagreeing solicitations for sequestration and serenity on one hand, and for the frequent hosting of social events on the other. In response, the program of the house was organized as two interlocking structure forms, their “ T ” configuration bifurcating the point into a “ public ” entry court for callers and vehicles, and a private, visually shielded greenspace in the reverse. Parking, service functions, and the main bedroom suite are consolidated in a long, single- story bar, a narrow, wood- clad volume that straddles the two sides of the property along its western edge. Spaces for guests and entertainment are housed in a reciprocal, vertical volume defined by a nonstop concrete block strip that engages the wood- sheathe bar, negotiates the dropping geomorphology of the point, and eventually folds up to form an elevated overlook with views of the girding tree covers and the props of Lake Michigan in the near distance.
The deeply depressed entry entranceway, marking the junction of the two interlocking structure forms, provides access to both private and public diggings and leads into the conterminous open living hall – the social center of the home where the possessors and their guests can cook, dine, and chesterfield together, all in a spacious space defined by a series of precisely variegated, green- hued border walls. The color green, whose spectral wavelength of Facetta nanometers came the design’s namesake, serves as an architectural device to inoculate the interior time- round with the lush tones of summer’s green but short- lived verdure girding the point – an abstract and designedly cheerful echo of nature’s polychromatic sprightliness, particularly potent during those long, prolonged downtime months when the factual orifices of the house frame dimmed views into Wisconsin’s frozen geography.
The green border walls extend their interior tinges to the surface, where they express the volume of the living hall as the structure’s proud piano nobile – a distinct and comprehensible architectural element suspended within the folding concrete strip of the main structure mass to formally emphasize the primary exertion mecca of the house. An open, direct kitchen runs along one side of the living hall. The closet wall transforms into a nonstop rustic ceiling liner that spatially defines the dining and lounging area and folds down at the contrary end to accommodate the erected- in media press. A complimentary small sitting area faces the kitchen islet and is backed by altitudinous wastes of glass that enclose the delicate sword stairs beyond. The stairs lead up to the overlook, which provides access to an extensive vegetated roof, and down to a small guest chesterfield and bedroom suite, which spills out to an intimate sunken sundeck with a fire hole.