This tour has 29 homes that cover a wide variety of architectural styles, designed for each client. You will see simple to avant-garde and modest to generous budgets; a cross-section of lifestyles from lakeside to city loft to farmhouses; and functional design decisions in material and citing meant to make the most of materials and land.
After a quick tour online of these homes, you can access the tour program guide and map and plan your own route to tour the homes.
The homes are listed from West to East and numbered accordingly on the map.
18. 104/105 Whitney Lofts Building, 150 Portland Ave., Minneapolis, Minnesota
Alchemy LLC
Geoffrey Warner, AIA, and Scott Ervin
Contractor: KA Construction
The live/work residence in the Whitney
Building was created for two
established graphic designers transplanted
from New York City. The space was
the historic entry point of the Mississippi
river channel that ran the turbines for
the Standard Mill in the mid-1800s. On
the lowest level of the building, the unit
was a study in maximizing light, space,
and functionality in a space containing
a forest of columns, 4-foot stone walls, and
a massive steel transfer girder. Metaphors
of the graphic designer’s “white page” and
mechanical detritus tie current uses to the
building’s historic past.