When their daughter’s health issues necessitated a move, the family of the famed Danish American furniture designer found a new living configuration by reworking a classic.
Transforming a prefab house into something special landed Danish American furniture designer Jens Risom’s Block Island, Rhode Island, vacation home on the pages of Life magazine in 1967. While the design of the glass-fronted structure captivated readers—including Dwell’s, decades later, when Risom revamped the place—what mattered most to Risom was family. Block Island, which reminded him of coastal Denmark, became the beloved summer retreat his children and now grandchildren continue to enjoy nearly 60 years later. The island also served as the longtime year-round home of his son Sven and daughter-in-law Laura, along with their now former small business, a micro yarn mill—until life, and family, led them elsewhere.
A medical diagnosis led Sven and Laura Risom and their daughter, Leah, to move from their longtime home in Rhode Island to a small town outside Minneapolis. The couple purchased a 1953 concrete-block house and asked designer Charlie Lazor to helm its renovation, including adding an attached ADU for Leah. The home reflects the legacy and sensibility of Sven’s father, renowned midcentury furniture designer Jens Risom.
Photo: David Steinberg
That turning point came with their adult daughter Leah’s diagnosis of multiple sclerosis and the realization that much of the world’s most advanced MS research and treatment were coming out of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. “Without a flinch, Leah’s doctors all agreed she would receive the newest care if she were within the Mayo protocol,” Sven says. Soon after, the three of them moved to a rural area near the historic town of Afton, Minnesota, where a 1953 ranch-style home awaited its next chapter. “Family first is a core part of our lives,” Sven says. (Plus, one of the couple’s twin sons and his family lived nearby.)
In the living room, a vintage Womb chair by Eero Saarinen and a vintage Egg chair by Arne Jacobsen face a 1960s coffee table by Risom. The side table is also by Risom, and the floor lamp is by Louis Poulsen. Beneath the window from Marvin is a dollhouse built by Sven for Leah 35 years ago.
Photo: David Steinberg
Sven and Laura tapped Lazor/Office in Minneapolis—led by Charlie Lazor, cofounder of Blu Dot furniture—to renovate the home. Lazor still remembers his first conversation with Sven, whose last name caught his attention: “I asked, ‘Any relation to the furniture designer?’ And he said, ‘Yes, that’s my father.’ I said, ‘Amazing—I’m going to have to sit down right now.’ ” He laughs that, unfortunately, there wasn’t a Risom lounge chair nearby. But he immediately recognized he had a client with a sharp eye who’d grown up in a home where design mattered.
A white dogwood tree grows in the courtyard created by the addition of the ADU on one side and the extended garage wall on the other. The fiber-cement siding is from James Hardie.
Photo: David Steinberg
See the full story on Dwell.com: Jens Risom’s Style Lives On at His Son’s Multigenerational Midwest Midcentury
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