The Story Behind the NEWLOOK Experience Home, Part 1

Part 1 of 2: To understand the motivations and inspiration behind the NEWLOOK Idea Home, you have to go back to the roots of the company and its owner, Michael Freiburger.

Every home has a story, but some are more interesting than others. That’s definitely the case with the NEWLOOK Idea Home, designed and currently under construction in Chicago’s North Shore area by Michael Freiburger, owner of NEWLOOK Design+Build+Development. 

What’s interesting starts with the basics: the lot for the custom spec home is in a floodplain, in a floodway, and encapsulates an isolated wetlands. 

As such, the house sits on helical piers fastened to concrete pillars that keep its entire 11,000 square feet of total living space several feet above grade, clearing the base flood elevation to enable construction, resilience, and livability. 

The interesting continues from there, wrapped up in its builder and the home’s origins, inspirations, and ultimate intention.

Michael is the son of a brick mason and contractor Dale Freiburger, who raised his son on taking pride in the craft, a principle the elder Freiburger advertised on his business card. 

From him, Michael learned what it took to build something new and what it was to be in business for yourself, the good and the bad. Though the experience didn’t immediately direct him towards the trades, it left a significant impression on him … so much that he named his own Mason in honor of Dale and history. 

Enrolled at Ohio University, Michael never meant to get into the family business; in fact, his father had once recommended against it. Instead, the son wanted to be a mechanical engineer, but was eventually drawn toward building—not custom homes on Chicagoland’s North Shore, but massive civil projects. 

After graduating, he went to work designing and building large commercial structures for a local developer. He was part of a team and then led a team, never having to worry about anything more than his workload and direct reports, never suffering the burden of the full business and often not even the full scope of a project.

By his own account it was secure, rewarding work, but never more than that. And as his passion for creating became more evident, so did his awareness that he was cut out for something different, something more his own. 

Michael left the comfort of his corporate 9-5 to join his father in the field, working again at the business he would one day call his own. At the time, the company was known as NEWLOOK Exteriors. Already a civil engineer with architecture experience, Michael was qualified for a wide variety of building and design work, but he wasn’t yet a licensed architect … but wanted to be so he could design, engineer, and create structures with his own stamp, literally and figuratively. 

At Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), he earned a Master of Architecture and fell in love with architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the latter of whom designed that institute’s campus layout and buildings and later brought the school’s architecture department to national prominence as its director. 

Michael went back to work, both for his father as well as for himself, starting RED3 Development LLC, a real estate investment, development, and management company he still operates today. 

While he continued working on commercial projects, the new venture allowed him to expand into residential. When he eventually took over his father’s business, he used his skillsets to expand its services, leading to its rebranding as NEWLOOK Design+Build+Development. 

For years, as he drove daily into his office in the heart of the Chicagoland suburb Wilmette, only a few miles from his home, he’d pass by an empty lot bordered by a forest preserve and a waterway. A beautiful lot, he recalls, rife with obvious potential, but shunned by local builders and developers because of its unfortunate position on a floodplain, in a floodway, and encapsulating an isolated wetlands—the future site of the NEWLOOK Idea Home.

Sitting with Michael in late 2024, he talks about his visit to Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Fallingwater in Mill Run, Penn., so named because the home is perched over a running stream and waterfall. 

"On a tour of the home, they tell this story about how Wright got hired for that job,” he says. “He goes to the site, talks to the client, and then just sort of meditates on it.” 

The story goes, more than a year passed and still Wright pondered on the home. “There was no email, of course, and no phones,” he continues, “He was sending telegrams back and forth with his client, the Kaufmann family.” 

The Kauffmann’s eventually send a telegram demanding their drawings, telling Wright that they would soon be en route to pick them up in person. “Wright knew traveling across the country would take several days,” Freiburger says. “So he called his team together and told them to sharpen their pencils and bring their rulers.” 

By the time the Kauffman’s arrived, the house was designed, and nearly exactly as it was built. 

Back in Wilmette, Ill., Michael drove by that troublesome lot for years, envisioning what it would take to build a house there and how that home might actually look. Like Wright, he meditated … until just last year, when he began to make his vision a reality.

(Click for Part 2, Envisioning A New Way to Live: The Story Behind the NEWLOOK Exprience Home)