Farquar Lake Residence

Farquar Lake Residence, designed by ALTUS Architecture + Design, is a 3,500-square-foot house completed in 2008 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The project was guided by the client's need for connectivity to both landscape and lake, as well as opportunities for outdoor play and gardening on a narrow, wooded, pie-shaped lakefront site. This led to a layout that organizes public and private zones into two distinct wood-clad volumes joined by a transparent breezeway and screen porch. A core design move is the glass-enclosed breezeway, which provides direct circulation from the car court to the lakeside yard, supporting visual and physical porosity through the plan. Continuous bluestone paving links entry and lakeside spaces, while the wood-clad volumes rest on a bluestone plinth that appears as an extension of the natural site. The low, folded plane of dark metal forms the house’s walls and roof, punctuated by strategic window placements on the west side to admit light and selectively screen views. Floor-to-ceiling windows in main living areas and the master bedroom frame lake views and provide daylight, strengthening the connection between inside and out.

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