A large new house doesn’t have to be a McMansion. An architect with a sense of history and a client with a sense of style can create dwellings of substance and enduring intrigue—like the great old homes we admire but with all modern amenities built into the design.
Heirloom Houses is a coffee table-scale book devoted to the work of Milwaukee architect Wade Weissmann. The spacious homes displayed on its pages draw from many historical models but are designed for the way its owners live in the contemporary world. Weissmann grew up in Milwaukee and was inspired by the hobby farm his family co-owned in Door County.
“I think it had around 30 buildings full of artifacts and I would spend my weekends exploring and absorbing everything I could,” Weissmann recalls. “I truly loved seeing the variety of buildings on the hobby farm. Perhaps this spurred my desire to try to create very unique spaces.”
His houses are also designed with a concern for the surroundings, natural and human made. Somehow the Shingle Style—a relaxed but sculpturally rich mode originating in late 19th century New England—seems entirely appropriate to Lake Geneva, where one of the book’s featured houses is located. Named for the preferred method of siding, Weissmann’s Shingle Style house is a carefully edited composition that fits snugly into a setting of woods and water. His Lake Geneva house is expansive and airy but never showy, with a relatively open floor plan conducive to contemporary family life and entertaining. Heirloom Houses also features dwellings inspired by Northwoods cabins, Prairie farmhouses, Norman manors and even an Art Deco penthouse in Downtown Milwaukee.
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Weissmann explains: “Our homes are meant to be passed down from generation to generation as treasured as any other personal heirloom, which is why our book is entitled Heirloom Houses. What we strive to achieve with every element of our design is a structure that doesn’t go out of style, ages gracefully and attains a particular patina over time. We not only want this to be our clients’ forever home, but also their great grandchildren’s. What will sometimes occur, and we find very rewarding, is when a client’s children end up reaching out to us to build their home, starting a new ‘heirloom house’ chain.”
Weissmann works with clients by assessing their needs and personalities. “It is such a personal process designing spaces in which clients want to live.,” he says. “It is because of this that we find getting to really know our clients so important. We spend time talking with them and asking them about their daily routines, their hobbies and how they want it to feel when they wake up in the morning or move throughout their home. We want to know what will make them feel most alive in their new space. We’ll often sit with clients and sketch as they describe their dreams for their home. We assess and learn as much as possible about our clients to ensure we design their perfect home.”
Don’t look to Weissmann if you want to live in a glass house or a white cube. “We look a great deal to the period of time between the 1880s–1940s in the U.S. as a point of reference and use that inspiration as a revival of the traditional style and craftsmanship to fit today’s modern lifestyles,” he says. “We have a large design library in our studio that’s available to all designers. We really enjoy researching the development that has taken place in a given environment, drawing inspiration from its history. It is important that a home makes sense in its environment.”
Lavishly illustrated with interior and exterior photographs of Weissmann’s completed projects, along with floor plans and sketches, Heirloom Houses is a handsomely designed compendium of an architect working beyond the dominant trends of his profession.
