Lily Lake Residence

Project Details

Project Description

2011 RADA
Custom / More Than 3,000 Square Feet / Grand

“Sublime” is how a judge described the relationship between an old stone cottage and a long, linear house that hovers behind it, like a mirage in the rolling terrain.

The clients wanted their new house to assimilate the old one. Peter Q. Bohlin, FAIA, took cues from the raw materials of this early 1900s agrarian landscape: farm structures, high grass, and a pattern of dry-laid stone walls. He placed a wood-and glass house between the cottage, now renovated as a library and loft, and a new pond. A delicate glass passageway joins the structures, lining up the cottage’s front door with a massive fireplace in the new house. Light streams down its stone face from skylights on either side.

The low-slung house unspools along an existing stone wall. Two lattice-clad rooms, inspired by corncribs, pop out of the narrow footprint. One is the study, extended by a deck over the pond. The other, a guest bedroom, pushes toward a great maple tree along the wall. “The lattice makes it a special room, perfect for resting or reading in the afternoon, with a sliding door facing the water,” Bohlin says.

Our panelists appreciated that the new house defers to the original, but each has its own identity. “The design restores the old stone farmhouse and then just quietly makes it a grand estate,” a judge said.