Gunflint Lake Cabin is dearly loved and frequently used by the owners and their extended network of family and friends.

Architecture Firm:  VJAA
General Contractor: Mike Lande
Awards: AIA Minnesota Honor Award, 2010

The cabin is constructed of concrete walls with wood floors and roof trusses.  The walls and roof are clad in corrugated steel on the main cabin while the sauna is clad in cedar.  This corrugated metal siding wraps around to become the roofing material without a parapet to accentuate the overall volume of the main cabin.  Gunflint Lake Cabin was built by one carpenter and one laborer with insulated stackable forms — even the concrete walls.  The H-Windows in the cabin were invented in Norway in 1959 where homes are subject to environmental extremes.  The idea was to have a window that insulates homes from sub-zero arctic winds while providing a real wood interior with a sash that fully reverses without projecting inside the room.   The precise alignment of the interior pine wood joints from floor to wall to ceiling creates a continuous wrapped wood interior — which is especially noteworthy given the challenge of a sloped ceiling.  The kitchen is all black with no over counter cabinets to accentuate the uninterrupted views from the windows along the west wall.

From the Architect VJAA

"The owners, a physician and artist, are based in the Minneapolis and have been visiting the area for the past twenty years.  Native Minnesotans and Scandinavians by heritage, they came to us in 2006 with a request for a retreat for them and their two adult daughters.  They asked for a simple space in which to live, cook, eat, and paint; enough sleeping area to accommodate fluctuations in guests and their own family; storage for canoes and outdoor gear; and a screen porch and sauna.

The three primary components of the house became the elevated living space, the boat storage, and the elevated sauna/porch and deck.  Responding to the extreme conditions of the site, the cabin pragmatically responds to the orientation, views, and how one enters the building and accesses the lakefront.  The building was placed on the western most edge of the property in order to capture the site to the east, avoid removal of a large stand of existing cedars, and take advantage of the greatest grade change on the property.  This set up a simple sectional relationship – akin to the Scandinavian precedent of a Stabbur (a place for a bathhouse, grain drying shed, food preparation, etc.) – where the main living level was raised above the high snow levels while keeping dampness and small animals out in the summer.  In addition, the exterior activities of the screen porch and sauna room were combined as a counterpoint to the long bar of the main cabin.  The lower level boat and ski/snowshoe storage provides easy access to the lake and to lakefront trails."

— VJAA