Camp Minoh

A Talented young desinger hones his talent on his parent's vacation home

- ELIZABETH EDWARDS

Camp MINOH, the name for the Heathfield family retreat, is tucked into a sublime stretch of sandy Lake Michigan shoreline north of Charlevoix. The property is peppered with birch and pine and not far away a Wyeth-esque barn, its timbers scorched by a past fire, is a reminder of the area’s rural roots. Those features helped inform Camp MINOH’s design—but only after they’d filtered through the inspired imagination of the young designer (now a licensed architect) who was integral to the design team, Andrew Heathfield.

Andrew, fresh out of University of Michigan’s architecture school, was working in Portland, Oregon, for the prestigious firm William Kaven Architecture when his parents, Dennis and Lori Heathfield, were ready to build on the property they’d owned for several years. Knowing that they would have the best of both worlds—intimate communication with their son and a shared family vision for their Northern Michigan home, coupled with the experience of William Kaven Architecture—the Heathfields hired the firm to design their home.

The Heathfields’ acknowledgment that their new home should be as much a design statement as a comfortable vacation retreat stemmed naturally, says Andrew, from living for years in Columbus, Indiana, a city known for its cutting-edge architecture, including the Harry Weese-designed home that the Heathfields lived in. Weese who designed the Washington Metro, is also credited with being the architect who shaped Chicago’s skyline. “For my parents, the home was a bit outside the box—a 1963 mid-century with a glass atrium, copper roof, parquet floors, etc.,” Andrew says.