This home in Wisconsin might be tall and a bit on the artsy side, but it takes a no frills approach to its use of space and the land in which it sits. It's a beauty to look at and has all sorts of small and modern space secrets on the inside. Come take a look:
Some small spaces are great to admire and we give mad props to those who live in them. That said, many of those spaces aren't really ones we'd personally like to live in. Well, my bags are already packed and I'm waiting for an invitation to this home because it looks like a wilderness dream come true.
Kathy Sawicki and Harry Wirth built this home in 1986 (what a vision for the era!), and each floor has a purpose with only a few divided spaces on each one. Here are a few words from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on the space:
blockquote>The house incorporates the couple's belief in sustainability. It's heated with passive solar, a wood-burning stove and electric baseboards. Cross-ventilation takes care of cooling during the summer months. The walls are a foot thick and well-insulated. The bathroom water heater is the size of a Kleenex box and extremely efficient. The toilet, a Swedish design, uses just a half gallon of water to flush.
Make sure to hop over and read the interview with the couple and check out the full gallery tour of their home. It's quite a treat indeed!
(Images: Ernie Mastroianni for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
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Love it. I used to have a spiral staircase in one of the places I lived. I kind of miss it.
He's a teacher at my school! I love houses with multiple stories and small footprints, and it is excellent to think of homeowners in my neck of the woods being interested in similar styles.
Sadly, even if invited I could never tour this house as it's not at all friendly for anyone with walking/climbing difficulties. I wonder what they shall do when they become incapable of all that climbing. It makes sense in a city with zero free land where people move when their needs change...but I do not see the point to intentionally making a house which would never allow friends with physical disabilities to visit...in the middle of the woods in an area not prone to flooding.
Are you honestly getting offended by stairs? It's not like 3 story homes are particularly out of the ordinary... I imagine if, in the future, they become less willing/able to manage the stairs they will simply move.
Spiral staircase = *droolworthy* This looks like a nice spot; I would love a house tour of it!
(I have the same kettle as them!)
ooooooh ... looooooooove. I just moved to Kenosha. I think I will find that house and gaze longingly from afar.
Also - what NitaDC said. Private homes don't have to be accessible if the owners don't want them to be. Whether or not you can do stairs, it's a gorgeous home that suits their lifestyle.
I just don't get the point of taking what should be a compact, easily managed and maintained design of 700 sq. ft. and adding two flights of stairs for no apparent reason or limitation of lot size.
But then again, for the sake of total transparency: I do have a bad foot and a bad knee and its making me tired just to look at that.
Also I have loved multi-story homes and I would probably be warmer on this one, if, you know, it wasn't so brutally ugly. I don't get the multi-coloured exterior at all. I think its a shame that that sort of pseudo-industrial style is still what so many people think of when they think of eco-sensitive design. They still think you have to choose looks good OR green as a dichotomy, or that the only other choice is those joke 4000 sq. ft. but four-star rated appliances McGreens.
I love small homes, and I love environmentally sensitive homes, but I guess I'm just not the market for the aesthetic because from the outside you'd swear it was a lost chunk of a mall.