Designed by Jeff Jordan Architects LLC, this wooden house is located in Roscommon, Michigan, USA. Many families in Michigan share a tradition of spending weekends and vacations in cottages adjacent to the state’s collection of lakes. Higgins Lake is considered one of the most spectacular of the inland lakes and the empty-nester’s who commissioned this cottage wanted to be able to share this resource with their large family and many friends. In order to do so, they requested a large gathering area for cooking, eating and relaxing and space to sleep twenty adults. Given the relatively large size of the cottage compared to the neighboring houses, the central challenge of this project is fitting a large building onto a narrow site without overwhelming the neighbors, but still taking advantage of the views. Our solution locates the house in the center of the site and breaks the overall volume of the building down into four smaller volumes to better incorporate it into the surroundings.
