Johnsen Schmaling Architects designed the Redaction House in Oconomowoc, Wisonsin.
![Redaction House in Oconomowoc, Wisonsin by Johnsen Schmaling Architects](http://www.sohomod.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/redaction-1.jpg)
A compact home for a textile artist and her young family, the Redaction House sits on a narrow sliver of land on a small suburban lake, surrounded by prosaic spec homes crowding the shoreline. The building, a simple wood cube on a stepped brick podium carved into the sloping site, is deliberately introvert, functioning as an optic filter that frames the limited lake vista while strategically editing out views of the built-up context.
![Redaction House in Oconomowoc, Wisonsin by Johnsen Schmaling Architects](http://www.sohomod.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/redaction-2.jpg)
A series of spatial voids carved into the building volume organize the program, starting with a linear entry courtyard along a brick wall whose decreasing perforation begins the process of visual redaction and leads to the transparent front door. Inside, floor-to-ceiling apertures alternate with solid walls, taking advantage of sightlines that are desirable and screen those that are not. The rooms are grouped around a two-story living hall, where the apertures are stacked vertically to frame views of the sky and the bluff’s deciduous foliage.
![Redaction House in Oconomowoc, Wisonsin by Johnsen Schmaling Architects](http://www.sohomod.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/redaction-3.jpg)
The wood cube is clad in horizontal cedar, complemented by vertical cedar between the deeply recessed apertures. Here, narrow painted boards create an unexpected filigree of colors, a subtle nod at the polychrome threads in the fiber artist’s own work.
Photography by John J. Macaulay
![Redaction House in Oconomowoc, Wisonsin by Johnsen Schmaling Architects](http://www.sohomod.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/redaction-4.jpg)
![Redaction House in Oconomowoc, Wisonsin by Johnsen Schmaling Architects](http://www.sohomod.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/redaction-5.jpg)
![Redaction House in Oconomowoc, Wisonsin by Johnsen Schmaling Architects](http://www.sohomod.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/redaction-6.jpg)
![Redaction House in Oconomowoc, Wisonsin by Johnsen Schmaling Architects](http://www.sohomod.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/redaction-7.jpg)
![Redaction House in Oconomowoc, Wisonsin by Johnsen Schmaling Architects](http://www.sohomod.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/redaction-8.jpg)
![Redaction House in Oconomowoc, Wisonsin by Johnsen Schmaling Architects](http://www.sohomod.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/redaction-9.jpg)
![Redaction House in Oconomowoc, Wisonsin by Johnsen Schmaling Architects](http://www.sohomod.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/redaction-10.jpg)