A private retreat in Marion County, Iowa, provides a central gathering place for an ever-growing, multigenerational family who owns a large, privately held corporation found and headquartered in southeast Iowa. While many of the family members live across the county, they return to Iowa each summer and needed a central gathering place to conduct business and reconnect.
A private retreat allows family members to conduct business, reconnect
Photo: Corey Gaffer, Gaffer Photography
Situated on 65 acres with rolling hills, a small pond and lots of vegetation, the facility is designed to host meetings, family parties, reunions and provide opportunities for outdoor recreation. The 7,000-square-foot building includes a large multifunction dining space for up to 100 family members, lounge and breakout spaces for adults and children, service spaces, exterior decks and a dock.
According to Mike Killeen, AIA, architect at Des Moines, Iowa-based substance architecture, the family saw this project as a representation of their enduring bond and family legacy. “It was to be a place they would look forward to coming every year to reconnect and forge memories for generations to come,” he says.
The project is inspired by the owner’s expression of enduring legacy and maintaining connection to their roots. “The overall design approach sought to express the architecture as being derived from opportunities afforded by the natural landscape,” Killeen says.
To achieve this, the siting of the building, as well as its organization, leverages the existing topography to achieve the desired experience and relationships. “With the pond being the owners desired focal point of the site, the ideal placement of the building was determined to be the sloping hillside between the site entrance and the pond,” Killeen explains. “The grade change in this location would allow the architecture to appear as an outgrowth of the landscape. To achieve this, the building is expressed as 3-foot masonry walls at the site entrance that extends level toward the pond and reveal the buildings height as the land falls away. Simultaneously, the surrounding grasses are allowed to flow between the walls and reach skyward as they seamlessly transition into the green roof.”
To clad the building, the architects used brick and metal panels in dark color tones to reference the rich Iowa soil and contrast with the green landscape. The brick, with its strong horizontal texture, anchors the building to the landscape, while the vertical metal panel reaches skyward to the roof. Chosen for its long-term stability of finish, durability, limited maintenance and cost, the architects used approximately 1,000 square feet of Nashville, Tenn.-based Elevate’s (formerly Firestone Building Products) 8-inch flush UNA-CLAD UC-500 metal panel.