“When you do a rural house, you create something manmade that interrupts the natural environment forever. It’s a big burden,” says Sebastian Schmaling, AIA. The firm is often asked to take on this burden, but always goes about the task with a reverence for what is already there. In this case, they were given a large canvas—a “huge piece of land” that was once an alfalfa farm—with a notable stand of birches on the edge of a plateau, descending ultimately to a wetland.
There was also a ruin of a barn, now just foundation walls tracing its former boundaries. These are simple but evocative elements that in sensitive hands can become architecture. The barn walls greet visitors on the long approach to the house, past prairie grasses moving like waves in the breeze. It takes a while to notice the house, because it dips into the sloping land and behind a board-formed concrete retaining wall not unlike those barn walls.
“The house is almost invisible from the road,” says Sebastian. “It’s carved into the topography. The front door frames a view of that birch grove beyond—this pristine collection of thin white lines against the brown and green of the wetland area. We based the façade system on these thin lines.”
An important part of the project was restoring 50 acres of native prairie, paying forward the use of the homesite and lessening its burden on the land. “We love the contrast between the rigor and geometric clarity of the home and organic nature and the movement of the grasses,” says Sebastian.
Citation
Custom Rural or Vacation House
Johnsen Schmaling Architects
Kettle Moraine
Campbellsport, Wisconsin
Project Credits
Architect: Brian Johnsen, AIA, and Sebastian Schmaling, AIA, principals in charge; Matt Wendorf, Ben Penlesky, Angelina Torbica, project team, Johnsen Schmaling Architects, Milwaukee
Builder: Rick Serwe Custom Cabinetry, Campbellsport, Wisconsin
Interior Designer/Landscape Architect: Johnsen Schmaling Architects
Project Size: 3,033 acres
Site Size: 93 acres
Construction Cost: Withheld
Photography: Justin Lee Lopez
Key Products
Cladding: Boral TruExterior
Cooktop/Range/Dishwasher/Washer/Dryer: Miele
Countertops: Neolith
Faucets: Blanco (kitchen), Kohler
Fireplace: Stuv
Garage Doors: Clopay
HVAC: Trane
Insulation: Owens Corning
Paints: Benjamin Moore
Passage Doors: Inox
Refrigerator/Freezer: Sub-Zero
Sinks: Blanco (kitchen), Lacava
Thermal/Moisture Barriers: Prosoco
Toilets: TOTO
Windows: Quantum, Marvin
Window Shading: Lutron
Window Wall Systems: Quantum
Images
Plans and Drawings
