Wheeler Kearns Staggers Three Volumes Into Lake Michigan House

By Elena Vasquez

Wheeler Kearns Architects has completed a 2026 house on the shore of Lake Michigan built from three staggered volumes, two of them two-storey gabled forms, one a flat-roofed single-storey box. The Chicago studio clad the 2026 house, called Timber Lane Retreat, in dark bronze standing-seam metal and light-toned limestone.

The plan is the story here. Instead of running one long facade parallel to the water, the studio offset the volumes around a central courtyard. A glazed corridor stitches the three parts together and creates a straight sightline from the street to the lake.

"This home is really a response to the tension between openness and shelter," Wheeler Kearns Architects told Dezeen. "The site offered a spectacular lake view but also demanded privacy, wind resistance and a sensitivity to the neighboring street."

Why stagger the house along the shoreline?

The studio frames the offset plan as a counterintuitive move. Most lakefront clients, it says, ask for exactly what this house avoids.

"Most clients building on a lake instinctively want the house oriented parallel to the water – one long, panoramic view," the studio said. "What we've found, and what this project really demonstrates, is that staggering the spaces along the shoreline actually exposes more of the home to the lake, creating varied and intimate views from different rooms rather than one singular experience."

The mechanism is simple: shifting the volumes breaks one big view into several smaller ones, each owned by a different room. "Every decision – the courtyard, the staggered plan, the material palette – came from balancing those competing demands," the team said. "The result is a home that feels open and expansive, but also grounded and quiet."

How is the program distributed?

Each volume has a clear job:

• Street-side gable: garage and mudroom below, exercise room and sauna above.
• Offset flat-roofed box: kitchen, dining and living spaces opening to the patio and lake through floor-to-ceiling sliding glass.
• Waterfront gable: anchored to the patio by a screened porch, with two guest suites holding the property edge and the entire upper level given over to the primary suite and a study.

The courtyard sits on the northeast side of the site, protected on three sides by the house. "It's an unexpected space that offers a transition between the neighborhood street and an expansive lake view," the studio said. "It draws natural light and air deep into each of the three structures."

What are the materials?

The gable roofs were designed to fit the neighbouring context, while the standing-seam roof and dark bronze metal box rib give the forms what the studio calls a clean, contemporary expression. The shorter limestone mass provides colour and texture contrast, and the stone is quarried regionally.

"We wanted the exterior to feel rooted in the region," the studio said. "The limestone is quarried regionally, and paired with recyclable metal cladding, it's a palette built to last."

Inside, character-grade domestic wood lines floors and ceilings. The boards carry intentional gaps backed by black insulation, an acoustic detail that manages sound in the open communal spaces.

Founded in Chicago in 1987, Wheeler Kearns has built another gabled house overlooking Lake Michigan, a low-lying house in an Illinois ravine and a penthouse for art collectors in Chicago. Timber Lane Retreat, with interiors by Butter & Eggs and photography by William Jess Laird, extends a practice of testing how lakefront houses meet their sites — and argues that the staggered plan, not the panoramic facade, is the better answer.