Jean Rehkamp Larson wrote the book on farmhouse style—really. Published in 2004 by Taunton Press, The Farmhouse helped make a name for her and the firm she runs with husband Mark Larson, in Minneapolis. So, too, did their award-winning residential work, which spans quite a few styles from traditional to modern and creative variations in between.
For this new house on a recently divided piece of farm property in Lake Elmo, Minn., Jean’s clients sought a building with both presence and propriety at the same time. They specifically wanted a “modern farmhouse” that would complement and incorporate a number of existing farm buildings they planned to keep and use. Their site and its neighboring area (located 25 miles or so from Minneapolis and about half that from St. Paul, Minn.) still has a rural look and feel, making a new farmhouse a contextual addition and not just a nostalgic nod.
While her book broadcast her reputation for understanding farmhouses and has consequently attracted more work in the style, Jean hasn’t tired of finding new ways to expand on their definition and expression. “I have done a lot of other projects along the way, so it’s not the only type of work I’ve done since writing the book,” she says. “But I always welcome more opportunities to do farmhouses. They have such beautiful proportions. They can be more modern or more traditional because they’re based on a simple volume.”
Loving Glaze
What tends to separate the originals from new interpretations is more generous application of glass—in windows and doors. As Jean explains, “We now have the elements under control, so we can apply lots of glass—which was at a premium before—and we can flood the place with light. The floor plans can be much more open because the kitchen is also now part of the main event. Overall, there’s greater flow between rooms.”
There’s also greater connection to the outdoors, both physically and visually. Gone from the modern farmhouse is the single, hinged kitchen door as the only passage to the backyard, clattering closed a dozen times a day. Indeed, this house has multiple means of egress, usually through double doors or wide patio doors. And even when there’s no door to walk through, there is floor-to-ceiling glazing to see through. Outside is only just a glance away.
Although certainly a farmhouse in style, scrutiny of the plan shows it is also a courtyard building in organization. Major rooms wrap around an existing in-ground swimming pool, still in great shape 40 years after it was built. No one room is terribly large in the three-bedroom house. The biggest self-contained room is the screened porch. It’s an essential part of any program in Minnesota, where, Jeans says, “the mosquitos are epic.” It’s not a “sunroom,” but a true porch room open to the breezes and, she points out, “to the acoustics of the outdoors. Windows would ruin it. And in the summer, it’s also a sleeping porch.”
The porch floors are concrete, as are the floors throughout the main level of the house. In the house, they provide radiant heat to supplement the forced air system. Farmhouse lap siding is everywhere, too—painted white on the screen porch, where it segues into board-and-batten toward the ceiling, and left as natural pine with just a whitewash in the kitchen banquette area and in connecting spaces between rooms. The pine trim widens to frame the tops of windows and doors—it evens morphs into a kind crown molding along the ceilings. “It’s an honest material panel—in both the modern sense and the farmhouse realm,” Jean says. “It’s the idea of timber. It looks hardy.”
Beacons in the Night
On the exterior, the engineered lap siding wraps the main house. “The garage and pool house are a board-and-batten that matches the profile of the existing buildings. It’s almost an ogee,” Jean says. Lap siding is, of course, traditional, but its modern progeny, engineered board, is a step forward in longevity and ease of maintenance.
A metal roof caps the side porch, which shades the living room from southwest sun and eliminates the need for window coverings on the private, 10-acre property. “It is the perfect prospect and refuge,” she says. The metal is farmhouse vernacular, but the way the porch sits up on short piers and the tight orchestration of how other portions of the house connect to foundation and ground are distinctly modern. “The piers involve a lot more concrete work, but they allow us to line up the porch columns. The columns are just painted timbers with checks in them, which is a little more rustic,” she says.
Limiting the sizes and shapes of fenestration is another contemporary move. For the grand stair and entry hall, they are ganged at the main gable end and stacked three-units high. The stair climbs up from the lower level (not visible from the exterior) to the main level, onto a landing, and then up to the second level. A loft on the second level sitting room is open to the stair volume, borrowing natural light from its wall of windows.
The stair is a centerpiece of the design, and not just for its windows. Its steel stringers and continuous raw steel handrail were fabricated by a local Scandinavian artist. The treads are glulam timbers stained black.
“The slimmer and sleeker it gets, the more expensive it gets. In this case, it didn’t need to be anorexic, but we did want it to be airy,” Jean explains.
“The site is so private, there were no worries about feeling exposed,” she adds, describing the stair hall. “There are wonderful views from inside out to the barn; and looking at the wall of windows when you’re on the outside signals the entry to the house.
“I think of these old farmhouses as beacons in the distance. The white buildings and the lights glowing from within—it’s all a clear beacon to call you home,” she says.
And if that beacon now has a more contemporary flare, it seems like a natural evolution to suit the way we like to live today. “Farmhouses are just a simple series of shapes that can let light in interesting ways,” Jean concludes. “They’re very accommodating. They don’t have a big ego. They’re happy to have a conversation with you, and to be a little more this or a little more that.”
Plans and Drawings
Project Credits
ARCHITECT: Principal-in-charge Jean Rehkamp Larson, AIA; project architect Sarah Nymo, AIA, Rehkamp Larson Architects, Minneapolis, Minn.
BUILDER: Todd Anderson, Lifespace Construction, Stillwater, Minn.
PROJECT SIZE: 4,800 square feet
SITE SIZE: 10 acres
CONSTRUCTION COST: Withheld
PHOTOGRAPHY: Scott Amundson Photography
Key Products
WINDOWS/DOORS: Marvin, Integrity by Marvin, Loewen
CLADDING: LP SmartSide
DOOR HARDWARE: Emtek
BATHROOM COUNTERTOPS: Caesarstone
VENT HOOD: Vent-A-Hood
RANGE/COOKTOP: Miele
OVENS: Miele
DISHWASHER: Miele
REFRIGERATOR/FREEZER: Sub-Zero
COFFEE SYSTEM: Miele
WINE EFRIGERATOR: U-Line
KITCHEN SINK Kohler
KITCHEN FAUCET: Brizio
KITCHEN HARDWARE: Liberty Hardware
SECONDARY FAUCETS: Grohe
SHOWER FAUCETS: Hansgrohe
MASTER SIINK Kohler
SECONDARY SINK Kohler
TILE: Mosa
LIGHTING: Sonneman Lighting, Artemide, Nuevo, Holtkoetter, Barn Light Electric
PAINTS/STAINS: Benjamin Moore