Sited gently on the lower slope of a dramatic sixty foot high coastal bank and surrounded by miles of undeveloped Cape Cod National Seashore beaches and scrub pines is a warm, modern beach house that is more than just a place to enjoy uninterrupted ocean views and sea breezes. Our clients dreamed of a house that would work equally well as both a year-round family “camp” and also as a “thinking retreat” for collaborating with their colleagues.
From the beginning of design it was critically important to us and to our clients – as well as the Town Conservation Commission and National Seashore representatives – that the house fit into its fragile site seamlessly. Our team responded with great care by designing the house to curve and shift softly with the natural topography and also by envisioning the new native and drought resistant landscaping growing back tight to the house as if both had always been there together.
The main house is conceived of as a collage of overlapping, cantilevered planes and volumes that culminate in a large living / dining space defined by an asymmetrically arcing copper roof plane. Entry to the house is by way of a long ramp through what will in a few years be a thicket of native pines and bushes, then through curving cedar shingled planes.
