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Architects: Lazor / Office
- Area: 2655 ft²
- Year: 2009
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Photographs:Peter VonDelinde
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Manufacturers: Western Window Systems, Ann Sacks, Kohler, Lennox, Speakman
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Lead Architect: Charlie Lazor
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Text description provided by the architects. It can be challenging enough to find the right frame for a painting. But what if you want to frame an ever-changing natural environment—and you also want to live inside the frame?
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The spaces of the Thumb House actively engage the surrounding landscape. Where the warm wood façade of the house recedes within a zinc wrapper, a wide outdoor room opens toward the lake, framing a panoramic view of water and sky. White-stained wood lines the inside of the outdoor room, transitioning smoothly into the white interior of the house at a glass wall.
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The logic of cutting into walls to reveal the tree canopy extends throughout the interior living spaces of the two-bedroom house while preserving privacy. Beneath high, continuous landscape windows, low walls define dining and lounge zones with a varied material palette—including tile, soapstone, birch, and walnut.A thumb-like extension disrupts the rectangular geometry of the house to form a secluded study, where a window dips down over the desk to present an intimate view through a field of tree trunks to the lake. Wood shutters can be opened to bring in some air, expanding the rooms in spring and summer.
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