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Tactile Treasure
This Edgewater pied-a-terre is a jewel box of textures and rich finishes
Behind the tall mahogany door, on the fifth floor of this Minneapolis high rise, lies a tactile treasure. Everything in this home beckons you to touch: the burnished oak floors, the soft cowhide-mosaic runner, the rustic Chinese hall table, the warm sienna leather wall tiles. You want to run your hands over the bank of smooth walnut cabinets, quietly magnificent, that flow from the hall into the kitchen.
From there, light floods. A gleaming slab of live-edge walnut floats. A crystal chandelier drapes. Tile drifts in wintery stillness. And the homeowner, he delights. He reads, he jogs, he self-deprecates, but mostly he delights in quality.
A retired hedge-fund manager, he scaled down from a much larger residence, moving city-ward from the suburbs, and splits his time in the Twin Cities among homes in Atlanta and Florida. “I wanted to be in the city and I looked at some places downtown, but I chose Edgewater for the Uptown location—it’s more diverse, there’s a younger feel to it, there are great restaurants, and, of course, the views are fantastic,” he says, motioning through his west-facing wall of glass to sailboats bobbing on tree-ringed Lake Calhoun.
Edgewater claims a prime spot on the eastern shore just before Lake Street slips between Lake Calhoun and Lake of the Isles. Designed by Minneapolis-based ESG Architects, the building is sleek and strong and unapologetically modern. Most of its 22 living spaces were empty square footage, ready for complete customization, one of only two such exclusively personal developments in the Twin Cities.
“I hire good people. That was my job,” the homeowner explains. “Well, I hire people who are smarter than me. Of course, everyone is quick to say, ‘That’s not hard.’”
A relative latecomer to Edgewater, he had the luxury of surveying the other residents in the building as he contemplated a design team. The recommendation was nearly unanimous: Lars Peterssen, AIA, and Gabriel Keller, associate AIA, who were with Domain Architecture & Design at the outset of the project and established their own firm, Peterssen/Keller Architecture, in December 2009. The fact that Peterssen lives in Edgewater himself may have factored into the decision. Interior designer Sally Wheaton Hushcha and builder Streeter & Associates also came highly recommended and formed a team familiar with the demands of a custom project and with the proven chemistry of prior collaboration. Which was a good thing.
“I gave them almost nothing to work with. I like wood, I like stone, and I wanted an urban feel rather than north woodsy. That’s about it,” the homeowner says of his directives. “I think they were shocked to have so much freedom.”
They were indeed surprised by the blank slate, and the lack of baggage most mid-lifers bring to a project—no collections, furniture, hobbies, or toys. “It was kind of like throwing darts at a wall,” Hushcha says of their starting point. The team’s initial dismay quickly turned to something close to giddiness as it became clear they had the best client ever. “He’s the ultimate non-micromanager,” says Hushcha. “He let us all flex our aesthetic muscles and do the things we were trained to do.”
The one thing their client brought to the project was trust. “They’d show me several choices and if someone felt strongly about it, they gave their spiel,” the homeowner says. “Then we’d vote, ‘Who likes this?’ I can only think of one time when I didn’t go with their first choice. This lacquer-topped table was Sally’s second choice.”
Armed with a sizable budget and almost complete artistic freedom, the team devised a design theme Keller calls organic modern: clean lines softened by rich natural materials and unique textures.
“We wanted to create a textural jewel box,” says Hushcha. “Since the home is only 1,700 square feet, we could afford to address individual surfaces and make each one exceptional. You’ll notice there are no painted walls—all silk, linen, leather, rough stone, smooth wood.”
Plumbing the furthest reaches of their professional resources, the design team went by feel, searching out the highest quality, most exclusive designs, and richest textures they could find. The oak floors are from logs recovered from the bottom of Lake Superior, super-hardened and varied in color by the deep, oxygen-deficient water. Blackstock Leather customized the color of the supple lambskin used for the foyer wall tiles. Live-edge 4-inch-thick walnut slabs, from fallen—not logged—trees in Oregon, are used as a kitchen bar, a fireplace hearth, and as a step into the raised owner’s bedroom. In contrast, the Brazilian soapstone countertops, light green with ornate eggplant-colored veining, have a slightly rough “leather” finish. Hushcha found the matte snowflake-patterned concrete tiles in a New York showroom. They were shown on a floor, but she used them on the kitchen wall. Rough stone tiles from England form an imposing fireplace-to-ceiling mantel. In the owner’s bath, the dark built-in cabinetry contrasts with a wall of shiny rough-set marble tiles that suggest water running down rock.
Since so many materials were custom, experimentation and innovation were the watchwords of the project. Take, for example, the 500-pound rolling wood wall, 5.5-feet wide and nearly 11-feet high, that turns the owner’s suite into a private sanctuary. It was craned in and required removing a glass panel in the building’s wall of windows. When the original ceiling track designed for the sliding wood proved infeasible, Peterssen/Keller associate Kristine Anderson found steel wheels and Streeter’s senior project manager Ben Dunlap devised a floor track instead. Dunlap raised the entire suite to accommodate plumbing without disturbing the existing home on the floor below. “It was a lot of planning and coordinating,” says Dunlap, “but it really went pretty smoothly because the client let us do what we’re good at.”
Peterssen and Keller opened up the living space, creating a study and maximizing the light and view from the glass wall of windows. Hushcha experimented with grout colors on the kitchen tiles but ultimately decided on a tonal gray-on-gray look. Tucked away behind the campaign-style handle off the foyer, the guest bedroom was a challenging windowless space. The fix? Keller excised a slice of wall to the kitchen and let light in through frosted glass, and Hushcha covered the walls with golden silk so the room has a calming glow.
When the members of the design team couldn’t find what they wanted, they built it.
“I had specific parameters for a nightstand, functionally and dimensionally,” says Hushcha. So she drew up a nightstand and a chest of drawers for the owner’s bedroom and had them made. She similarly customized a wing chair with arms at the client’s request.
While it was satisfying to work in such an uncompromised environment, the design team never lost sight of the goal: the homeowner’s happiness. “Our biggest concern was in getting every detail right,” said Keller. They were apparently successful, as their client says the pied-a-terre exceeds his expectations. He’s delighted.
Sarah Barker lives and works in St. Paul.
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