Harbert Cottage, Lake Michigan Cabin, MI Real Estate Redevelopment, American Residential Property, USA Architecture
Harbert Cottage on Lake Michigan
Contemporary Lakeside Cabin in North America – design by Searl Lamaster Howe Architects
Dec 8, 2019
Harbert Cottage, MI
Design: Searl Lamaster Howe Architects
Location: Lake, MI, Michigan, USA

The brief for this project was born from a desire to clearly express the beauty of simple honest construction and basic materials characterizes this gut renovation of a 1950s ranch house, now Harbert Cottage, in a lakeside Michigan community

Exposed wood trusses, polished concrete floors, zinc coated walls and roofing, galvanized metal grating, and white stucco are offset by crimson red casement windows. A screened porch – the epicenter of this summer home – distinguishes the street side facade and provides a direct connection to the gardens surrounding the house.
A geothermal well feeds a radiant heating system embedded in the floor. Structurally insulated panels fabricated offsite provide a superior level of thermal protection.

Local sourcing was used whenever possible for supplies including the windows, cabinetry, drywall, concrete block, trusses, and metal work.

The brief was to reinvigorate and much loved but much delapidated cottage owned by the client since the early 1970s.

Some of the key challenges was maintaining the character of the original structure in the renovation. Much of the structure of the ho...