The gutting of the ground floor uncovered a former union meeting hall, with a steel beam spanning 45 feet. “With renovations on buildings like these,” says Berridge, “you never know what you’ve got until you start doing demolition. Once we started, none of us could figure out what was holding the building up, because there were no posts. It was quite something. That’s what allowed us to have this huge open space on the ground floor.”
Bartlett didn’t want plugs that would protrude below where paintings hung, but the building code demands a certain amount per room, so the architect designed recessed ones that interrupted the plane of the wall as little as possible.
Where the New Buffalo Residence now stands on a wooded lot by the shores of Lake Michigan, there used to be a serpentine ranch house with perplexingly small windows, none of which pointed toward the water. The homeowners had used it as a vacation retreat for over 30 years before an expanding family—and guest list—led them to approach architecture firm Booth Hansen for a fresh design.
Seen from a distance, the farmhouse has a time-honored quality, though it’s still clearly a product of the 21st century.
Here, Møller is in her studio where she works with a variety of textiles and printing techniques.
