Sustainable Lakefront Home

Sustainable Lakefront Home
The living roofs provide habitat and have a greater insulation value and noise reduction properties, while protecting the lake by infiltrating rain and snow melt
This beautiful modern home with a Tahoe twist is very low maintenance, sustainable, and easy living. MWA, and principal architect Kristi Thompson, balanced comfort and luxury with high performance and efficiency. Eliminating the use of high-maintenance wood on the exterior of the home led to the creative use of metal for siding, exposed structure, and roof fascia, while utilizing color tones and roof lines typical of Tahoe. Sustainable features include a roof solar PV array, multi-panel solar-thermal hot water system, ground-source heat pump for hydronic floor heating, living green roofs, reclaimed wood throughout, and abundant natural ventilation and light.

2015 CATT Award - Sustainable Building Methods Project of the Year

read more

I would like to highly recommend Kristi Thompson for Architectural and Engineering services along with her associates at MWA. When we hired Kristi we were looking for a professional who was thorough, thoughtful and was interested in providing the home we wanted which was more European Old World than the traditional Tahoe style of home. Kristi listened and responded to our desires and we ended up with a home that exceeded our expectations. She first did research to be sure we were aligned on the look and feel we wanted providing images of existing homes and buildings in the Alps for our consideration. After many meetings and lots of back and forth we came up with a design that we loved that blended old world and mountain architecture. Kristi studied the lot considering the slope, sun angle, views and our desire for privacy and came up with an ideal site for the home. As the design developed there was a high degree of interaction ensuring our ideas of which we had many were incorporated. Overall we were very pleased with the result. Others seem to have liked it also as it won the Peoples Choice Award at the Martis Camp Architectural Show in 2008.


-- Ed and Betsy Richardson
Copyright © 2026 - All Rights Reserved