Roffman Residence
This rural lakeside home addition carefully wrapped a massive low-slope single story roof around an existing two-story farmhouse to provide not only deep and generous verandas, but also a marvelous greatroom with extensive full-height lakefront views. The symmetrical roof floats on two deeply inset corner columns and flys out to a near-knife edge, visually giving a sense of massive shelter and providing deep shaded veranda deck areas equal in size to the roof above them. The deck itself floats above the earth plane a dozen or so inches, with a deep shadow line beneath its edge. The ten-foot overhangs of this roof provide a great sense of horizontality except where it is penetrated by a story-and-a-half, long-arched, greatroom window-wall stretching the full width of the existing house. In the evening, the effect of this striking roof is that of a large flying saucer hovering just above the groundplane alongside the beach of the nearby lakefront. In the daytime, the roof bespeaks great shaded protection from prairie sun and wind, and suggests leisurely afternoons to be spent in peaceful enjoyment of the sun and the lake.
