When Michigan modernist William Kessler accepted a commission for a single-family project on Wing Lake, the architect and his clients were in agreement: Everything points toward the lake.
So, the architect designed a long, rectangular residence true to his minimalist aesthetic. With its rigid horizontal lines and stark white exterior, the 3,400-square-foot home stands out from its lakeside surroundings, a contrast that calls to mind the tensions between nature and industry in Leo Marx's 1964 "The Machine in the Garden." from the back, a tower of angular skylights juts up from the volumetric structure, with thin, stainless-steel grooves cutting across the façade. But at the rear, the design dissolves into an expanse of glass, framing views of the lake at every turn.
For interested homebuyers, that tends to be the money shot, explained Century 21 broker Paul Nirenberg. “Obviously, the view is probably the one major thing [they remark upon].”
Nirenberg has the Bloomfield Hills residence at 5904 Wing Lake Road listed for $3.5 million. The 3,400-square-foot home hasn't been on the market since 2008.
“I feel like this is a home that if somebody buys, they’re going to be learning about certain aspects of the home for years to come,” Nirenberg said.
The house is 'designed to maximize the sunset'
Spanning about 108 acres, Wing Lake is bordered by trees, its less trafficked sections polka-dotted with lily pads. A select number of residential lots face the lake in Bloomfield Hills, including 5904 Wing Lake, which boasts about 240 feet of frontage.
Kessler completed the home in 1992, toward the end of a decadeslong career that began around 1955. Then a graduate of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Kessler worked at Detroit’s Hellmuth, Yamasaki, and Leinweber, eventually continuing his early career under Minoru Yamasaki, the famed American architect behind the original World Trade Center.
Eventually, Kessler formed his own firm, gaining recognition for the Grosse Pointe home he designed for his family in 1959 and for several institutional and cultural projects. Kessler’s work embodied a “human-scale” approach, according to Michigan Modern, maintaining a rigorous focus on how users experience the space. Michigan Modern is a project from the State Historic Preservation Office.
Designed closer to the turn of the century, the Wing Lake residence leans contemporary, but it still bears some of the architect's midcentury characteristics. The four-bedroom, five-bathroom home opens into a gallery-like space, with wide, white walls to show off artwork and marble slabs fitted to minimize the number of cuts and align with the front door, Nirenberg said.
From that entrance, the home flows back into the main living spaces: a sparse kitchen with characteristic midcentury blockiness and a lakeside great room that boasts a sizable fireplace. On the upper floors, skylights further illuminate private spaces, and muted leather tiles soften the floors.
“The home itself is basically designed to maximize the sunset,” Nirenberg said. “It faces due west."
The home’s minimal interior — characterized by shades of white, silver finishes and steady lines — further emphasizes the view outside: The lapping of the lake and the movement of the sun is where the action is.
“There was an attention to trying to create serenity and quietness within the home,” Nirenberg said. That included acoustic serenity, he continued. The home has thick Sheetrock walls to dampen the noise, stainless steel gutters to mute the plonks of raindrops, and air-conditioning compressors pushed to the roof of the garage to minimize any mechanical drone.
A large home with a 'small' buying pool
So far, Nirenberg has completed about eight showings, and says people are responding well to the home. Many have remarked on how well cared for it is, noting that it’s “very clean, even in the mechanicals room,” Nirenberg said. “It’s kind of spotless on the floor.”
More broadly, the home’s Bloomfield Hills neighborhood “has always been a hot commodity area,” Nirenberg said, especially the select few homes sitting directly on Wing Lake. Still, the agent and the seller went back and forth on what the buyer appetite for this kind of home might be.
At a $3.5 million price point, it’s the kind of listing Nirenberg could see calling to an older, higher net-worth buyer, although the two-story home’s stairs and lack of ground-floor primary bedroom might complicate the matter.
“I will say, there is definitely room in this home to put an elevator,” the agent said.
“We know it’s a super high-end home,” Nirenberg said. “We know it’s pretty large. We know the buying pool for homes like this [is] small, [and] the buying pool for contemporary homes [is] even smaller.”
But the pool of Kessler-designed residences is also small, the agent noted, making the listing “an opportunity for a person that’s looking for a high-end home to own ... that’s unlike anybody else’s.”