Raising the Barn: Modern Home, Old-Fashioned Design

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Inspired by a country barn, this vacation home on Lake Michigan’s Sturgeon Bay stays warm during frigid Wisconsin winters, thanks to energy-efficient features such as radiant in-floor heating and an air-to-air heat exchanger. Photo By Barry Rustin

With its many panes of glass and varied roof lines, Carol and Dave Klobucar’s house on Lake Michigan’s Sturgeon Bay is very 21st century. At the heart of this Energy Star-qualified Wisconsin vacation house, however, are design concepts as old as the horse-drawn plow—and it’s those ancient ideas that make this red house green.

“If you go back in time, nearly all architectural elements were a direct response to climate influences,” says architect Nathan Kipnis, the Chicago-area architect who designed the 2,600-square-foot home. “These elements included roof shape, building orientation and window types. The local materials also influenced what was possible or practical. We took the best of those concepts and put them into this house.”

For the Klobucars, finding a green architect like Kipnis was the key to building in a way they’d long pondered, but didn’t necessarily understand. “I’ve always been interested in conservation,” says Carol, vice president and news director at Chicago’s WBBM-TV. “It just seems like the right thing to do.”

Starting at square one was daunting to the couple at first. “You can educate yourself on green issues, especially through the Internet,” Carol says. “But learning on your own can be tough, so we were happy to find an architect who was a strong advocate and taught us the best environmental practices out there.” 

Keeping cool with natural ventilation 

Kipnis still recalls with excitement the first time he saw Carol and Dave’s lakefront property—nearly an acre of land with lake views and private woodlands. “I was floored,” he says. “It is really amazing.”

The gorgeous views guided the design, but Kipnis also focused on two other considerations in shaping the house. “One of them is sort of a regional vernacular of a barn—an exploded barn,” he says. That form fit ideally with a second, more practical consideration: natural ventilation. “Old barn ceilings were sloped and the vents were up top to help the hay dry,” Kipnis says. On Lake Michigan, that same concept helps keep the weekend home cool even on hot days.

The Klobucar home is comprised of four distinct areas: A ground-level wing houses the master bedroom. The kitchen, family and dining rooms occupy an open space with vaulted ceilings and a wall of windows. The mechanical workings and guest rooms are located upstairs in a third area with a balcony and screened-in patio, and rising above it all is the ventilation tower, Kipnis’ favorite feature. “The ceilings are curved to direct the naturally hot air up into the ventilation tower,” he explains. “You can open remote-controlled windows at the top of the tower to allow the air to exit. Cooler air enters through the ground-level awning windows in the family room and is pulled inside naturally, creating a self-generating, gentle air flow.”