“When you’re doing a second home, a lot of the character of the design is defined by what it isn’t,” says architect Greg Howe, as a way of explaining the minimalistic approach that was taken on this Michigan weekend home. “If you think of it as cold, you have to remember, the setting, and accessing nature, is the point.”

Built on a challenging hillside site and tucked behind a thicket of trees, the Bridgman, Michigan, house designed by Scott Rappe provides a modern weekend retreat for a Chicago couple. “One of my first responsibilities was getting the owners up to their house and essentially on one level. Because of the pie-shaped property, we needed to push the building up the hill to provide square footage for the program. By keeping the building perpendicular to the slope, using piloti on one side and a retaining wall on the dune side, we were able to insert foundations with minimal disturbance," says Rappe.

Tom McMurtrie and Genia Service with their five-year-old son, Gary.

Architect Jim Garrison of Brooklyn-based Garrison Architects was asked to design a lakeside retreat for visiting families at a boarding school for troubled teens, Star Commonwealth, in Albion, Michigan. To drastically reduce academic interruption and cut site noise, Garrison decided early on to create an 1,100-square-foot modular building dubbed Koby, with two bedrooms on opposite sides of the structure and a common dining area in the middle “as a therapeutic space for families to gather and eat together.”

A roof deck provides views of the verdant, southwest Michigan landscape.

The cottage sits on an acre of mature trees, with a sloping lawn stretching to the pebbly shore of the inland lake. The Campbells regularly drag their kayaks down to the water’s edge and set off toward the deeper waters of Lake Michigan.

Heralded as a cultural landmark when completed in 1979, the plaza features a sculptural fountain designed by Noguchi. For more on the plaza, Docomomo offers a good history.

Dow Chemical put Midland on the map, but architect and local scion Alden B. Dow made it the most modern town in Michigan. Dow’s masterpiece is undoubtedly his home and studio in Midland. Designed in 1933 to be built in stages, the sprawling manse seems to rise out of a pond, its green copper roof and bright-white, geometric form seemingly birthed by the landscape. It’s a nearly perfect evocation of a guiding Dow dictum, “Gardens never end, and buildings never begin.”

At Detroit's Nora, find a curated selection of modern housewares and accessories from local and international designers including pieces by Ferm Living, Kaico, Soma, and Artek.

Philip A. Hart Plaza and Horace E. Dodge and Son Memorial FountainDetroit, Michigan Located on the banks of the Windsor River, the Philip A. Hart Plaza was designed by architecture firm Smith, Hinchman & Grylls with the help of Isamu Noguchi.

The Styling dome on the campus of General Motors’ Technical Center is 188 feet wide and 65 feet tall. At just three-eighths of an inch thick, the structure’s aluminum skin is proportionately thinner than an eggshell.

The shop has an especially strong selection of tableware: glasses and utensils from Iittala, Hasami porcelain, and a bar board from Michigan designer Jose Regueiro are standouts.

The bank of windows on the rear facade faces a lush hillside. "The prototypical country house wants to look over and out on the land," says Rappe. "This house looks at the slope upward. It makes for a different sense of space." Rappe was very careful to ensure that the house would not be visible from the existing properties and that neighboring houses would not be visible from within his design. "We wanted to do a home that was attractive to our clients but not too obtrusive to neighbors," he adds. "We wanted to be good modernists."

After purchasing a revered archetypal lake house designed by American architect Richard Meier, a retired couple launches into the home’s second renovation in 35 years. Photo by Dean Kaufman.

The view of Lake Michigan from the Douglas House.

The Marvelous Suite looks out over a serene Lake Michigan. According to W Hotel design director Ted Jacobs, the challenge they faced when redesigning the hotel was making the rooms and public space more open and experiential. "Gen Luxe definies luxury as experiences," he says.

Designed by New York firm Desai Chia Architecture in collaboration with Michigan firm Environment Architects, Michigan Lake House was dramatizes the experience of dark and light as the sun moves through the day.

The 3,200-square-foot house evokes Mies van der Rohe's modernist aesthetic, in a stacked, three-dimensional form. Dirk Lohan of Lohan Anderson, the grandson of the iconic architect, designed the house to be a perfect cube.

Highland Park Ford Plant, Highland Park, Michigan (1910)The Highland Park Ford Plant, designed by Albert Kahn, was the first so-called daylight factory, and the birthplace of the moving assembly line. Created for Henry Ford, who ceaselessly refined his process of efficiency in an effort to save unneeded motion, the building's natural light and improved air quality was a boon to Ford's workers' quality of life (and productivity). Over the course of the next 30 years, Ford and Kahn's collaboration yielded 1,000 factory buildings, setting a pattern for American industrial architecture.

Soaring ceilings and classic modern furniture define the interior spaces.

Alexander Girard sitting beside a custom rug for the Rieveschl home he designed in Grosse Point, Michigan, 1951.

Residents are allowed a small swath to plant gardens. "A lot of credit is due to the landscape architect," says Barlow, and "Mies's floor-to-ceiling windows make the spaces feel open, while at the same time the canopy of trees makes you feel protected. It's a private, quiet, green oasis within spitting distance of the freeway, and you'd never know it."

A view of the residence from the shore of Lake Michigan.

No visit to Michigan is complete without a stop at the iconic Cranbrook Academy of Art. (1025 likes)

This two-bedroom, two-bathroom standard Hygge Supply model was built on a corner lot in Traverse City, Michigan.

Max De Pree House Designed in 1954, the Zeeland, Michigan home of Max De Pree—son of Herman Miller founder D.J. De Pree, and later the CEO—melded local style and history with Scandinavian cool, including a sleek vertical shape and a cedar exterior. Photo credit: chicagogeek, via Creative Commons

One of Dow's great civic buildings, the Midland Center for the Arts has a grand auditorium and a smashing curtain of his design. In 1969, when the theater opened, a local newspaper claimed that the space had standing room for every resident of Midland.

This single-family residence in Bloomfield, Michigan, known as the Treehaus, embodies the iconic style of midcentury modernism. Thanks to a thoughtful renovation, this rare dwelling has been restored to its original state of refined elegance.

The outdoor furniture is from Richard Schultz.

The dining area features an ash table designed by Desai Chia and created by Gary Cheadle. The chairs are by Jens Risom. - Leelanau County, Michigan Dwell Magazine : September / October 2017

Brogan’s home overlooking Lake Michigan is clad in tongue-and-groove new-growth cypress. Vertical basswood slats follow the stairs to the second floor and into the master bedroom, extending outside to serve as the railing for a small balcony.

Located on the northwest coast of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, the home overlooks cherry orchards and Lake Michigan. The vertical 1,600-square-foot residence features a prefabricated steel construction sheathed in a skirting wall of recycled translucent polyethylene slats that protrude two feet from the galvanized sheet metal that clads the walls. The result is a glowing, almost ghostly house that dissolves into the landscape.

Beautiful Skies through Ruins Detroit, Michigan Annmarie Roche

Blocks of color in the stained glass windows and decidedly more sober brick are the dominant materials of the main sanctuary of Midland's First Methodist Church.

Three interconnected structures—one for communal spaces, one for the master suite, and one for the three children’s bedrooms—are linked via a glass-enclosed breezeway that also serves as the entrance and dining area. - Leelanau County, Michigan Dwell Magazine : September / October 2017