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"View Slideshow\n\nNo house by Michael Graves ever closely resembles another of his designs. Even though client choices, preferences and budgets are sometimes similar, each residence appears to be newly invented, in part a response to the particular characteristics of its site. The curiously playful yet formal design of a house called De Luwte (\"The Lee\" in translation), so named by its owners to suggest a shelter from the wind and water, has much to do with its setting in the Dutch town of Loenen, on the shore of the Vecht River. This twisting, meandering tributary of the Rhine, flowing northward from Utrecht to Amsterdam, is bordered on both sides by several little towns. In the environs of each are the occasional nobleman's castle, parks and gardens, and dozens of 17th- and 18th-century villas and summer houses built by rich Amsterdam merchants. Loenen is the most picturesque of the Vecht riverfronts as viewed from the pleasure boats that go by.\n\nGraves's clients, a real estate investor and developer and his wife, a medical doctor in general practice, wanted a large house that would be their main residence. Their sons live abroad, and the new home provides generous space for their visits. It comprises approximately 8,000 square feet, with two wings (the rear wing has two floors; the front, three) and a partial basement used as a cinema room and for wine storage.\n\nGraves did his best to make the house belong to the Vecht region without directly adapting any of the multiple specific styles on its shores.\n\nIn many places in the world, the site chosen for a house as grand as De Luwte would be considered too small. The Dutch saying, \"God made the sea, we made the shore,\" was inspired by the fact that in the Netherlands, over the centuries, land for agriculture and buildings has been hard won, by means of draining and reclaiming the below-sea-level salt marshes. De Luwte had to fit into less than a half acre without appearing or being constrained. Graves made the house as compact as possible.\n\nThe front wing's first floor is designed for access by car. A narrow canopy extends from the fa\u00E7ade across the brick-paved motor court to announce the entrance, which is flanked by garages that open to the sides of the house. The second and third floors contain bedrooms, baths, a sitting room and a dressing room, and those at the top are lit by bull's-eye dormers. Past the entrance hall, at the center of the house, are the spaces that unite the two wings: the double-height dining room, the kitchen and, in the middle, the very grand semicircular stair. Terraces extend both the dining room and the kitchen into the outdoors.\n\nThe rear wing is designed for river access and has two stories bookended by double chimneys. It holds the living area, with a sitting area opposite, space for a grand piano in the center and a fireplace at either end. Five French doors allow these interconnected functions to spill into the garden that reaches toward the river's edge, the one in the center leading to a covered terrace. On the second floor, which is double height and has five bull's-eye gable dormers that illuminate its upper reaches, are the study, the library, the master bedroom and, above the terrace, the tea room. In alignment with the French doors of the first floor are four additional French doors and the tea room door. Passages through the master bath and the stair hall connect these upper-level rooms to those of the front wing.\n\nGraves is very fond of the town of Loenen and did his best to make the house belong to the Vecht region without directly adapting any of the multiple specific styles on its shores. He was influenced and inspired by the stone and brick craft traditions of a 16th-century Dutch Reformed church that dominates the town center. \"It was not just the church,\" he explains, \"but the houses, the city hall and the windmills that add up to a charming little town.\"\n\nBefore beginning to develop De Luwte's design vocabulary, Graves took trips up and down the Vecht to photograph the local architecture as seen from the water. He documented the different and very handsome ways the Dutch plant, pave and fence their lots. \"When you go down the river,\" he remembers, \"you see these almost Palladian mansions\u2014big houses with smaller buildings on the side that together make a U shape that embraces the front yard and overlooks the water.\"\n\nGraves also made studies of local buildings\u2014not of the river architecture as it actually appears but of certain forms that suggest its essence\u2014and became especially fond of the delightful architectural follies, especially those used as teahouses.\n\nDe Luwte would have a folly of its own. However, instead of a freestanding outbuilding, like that of most residences in the region, the architect and his clients resolved that De Luwte's folly would be attached to the main house. This way, they agreed, it would receive more use. Graves considered multiple forms for the structure, which projects out from the riverfront elevation and into the garden, but ultimately determined that the most pragmatic and effective for framing views out and along the river would be an octagonal shape.\n\nThe attached folly, besides being a place for entertaining, integrates the rear of the building with the landscape. \"I like the way the ivy has grown all over the tea room,\" Graves says. \"You can see the river view through the circular openings, but otherwise it's a dense screen. The use of plants or trees for this effect is very Dutch.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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