Nordic Craft at North House Folk School
While the world paddles ever further into the tides of instant gratification and AI everything, there is a growing desire to reconnect to our heritage, our human-centered creative capacities, and our authentic experience of materials and places. Set on the rugged shore of Lake Superior, the North House Folk School serves to be this re-connector: preserving traditional skills from boatbuilding to basketry; linking communities and cultures through craft; and threading these ideals together through the rugged Northern landscapes and Lake Superior shoreline.
Design
The North House Folk School’s welcome center stands as an inviting entry, immediately recognizable in its form and color to vernacular buildings in northern fishing villages throughout the world. The building’s lower and ground floors hold the school store, classrooms, and administration offices. On the building’s East and West elevations, a playful series of shed-roof dormers add a vertical expression and extends the glazed window area to saturate the upper level’s vaulted-ceiling classrooms in daylight.
“Of us and for us”
Traditional joinery and timber framing are one of the school’s flagship courses, so when it came time to fabricate the timber structure, 48 past students came back, volunteering in teams of 16 for a week at a time, to cut and join the building’s locally sourced White-Pine timbers. Professional timber framers then assembled the 256 timber elements into the structural frame. The carved corner-posts supporting the entries are a nod to the over-sized ornamentation on nearby cabins and lodges designed in the early 20th century by St. Paul architect Edwin Lundie.
Traditional yet High Performance
The North Shore of Lake Superior is infamous for extreme temperatures and high winds, where window performance is critical for interior comfort and lower energy use. The project’s triple-pane windows, configured in a mix of Direct Set and Awning windows, achieve excellent air infiltration resistance and thermal comfort. In pleasant weather, operable windows allow the breeze to naturally ventilate the spaces. Simulated divided lite grilles are an elegant finishing touch grounding the traditional aesthetic of the project.
“This is a school that believes in the power of all of us to build and shape a meaningful future,”
- Greg Wright, Executive Director NHFS
A Place for Craft
Authentic materials in the hands of skilled craftsmen have a compounding quality elevating the nobility of both the material and the human. This combined effect of material and maker enriches the experience for students, instructors, and curious visitors- it connects us to our past, links us to our place, and prepares us for our future.
Design
LHB
Location
Grand Marais, MN
Windows
Direct Set Window
Awning Window
Exterior Materials
White powder coated aluminum
Interior Materials
Pine with factory-finished clear coat