A striking contemporary American house that blends seamlessly with its oceanfront environment
There is no challenge quite like trying to create a jewel box in a natural landscape already as beautiful as can be imagined. This site is a remarkable intersection of ocean, pond, dune, wet- lands, wildlife, and sea, sky, light, and air. Wherever you are on the property, you feel at one with the world. Collaborating with Leroy Street Studio and Victoria Hagan, we wanted to create a modern home that celebrated art made by man, and that honoured and preserved the art of nature.
A site like this comes with numerous constraints, ecological and otherwise. In creating the outdoor spaces, we had to merge art, science, and constructability to blend what’s desired with what’s required in terms of the necessary infrastructure for this kind of house in this type of ecologically sensitive environment.
The walkway to the front of the house climbs through a cascade of water because, with ponds on the north side and the ocean on the south, the site is about the aquatic. Along the boardwalk to the bay, we planted Joe-Pye weed, native hibiscus, and other native species that make even more magic of the wetland experience. For the boardwalk to the dunes, we innovated a new solution that resulted in a sensuous central byway to the beach. These boardwalks are typically either made of plastic grating or need to be elevated four feet above the dune with railings. But a close reading of the code revealed that the boardwalk had to be half open to allow enough air and light to sustain the beach grass below. We used curved ipe wood slats to create a transformative path to the beach that meets the half-open/half-closed mandate, ensures the journey is as special as the rest of the property, and preserves the health of the native beach grass community while gliding through the sinuous contours of the dune field.
Our goal with an oceanfront house like this is always to make the house feel at one with its setting, and maximise the places where the clients can feel as if they’re in and of the ocean and the sky. Much of this house encompasses truly indoor-outdoor spaces, as do the transition areas between the interior and exterior rooms where the family can sit undercover, feel totally protected from the elements, yet smell the salt air, hear the waves hit the shore, and savour the breeze in all its moods.
The more extreme the environmental conditions are in a particular place, the more limited the palette of vegetation that wants to grow there. While our plantings here are not all strictly native, they are of the beach and adapted to these conditions, species like beach rose, beach plum, bayberry, and all sorts of native and ornamental grasses that feel soft and wild. There are also other florae, such as butterfly bush (buddleja), that thrive by the beach and attract butterflies, honeybees, hummingbirds, and other members of the universe that we want to welcome into the landscape for all sorts of reasons, not least because they enrich our lives.
Charles Mayer1/4Ipe slats allow the necessary flow of light and water in this boardwalk that connects the house and beach along the dune’s sensuous curve
Charles Mayer2/4The entry staircase mimics the architecture’s forms and materials. Cascading water adds joy to the climb and attracts birds and pollinators, as do bayberry, hydrangea, buddleja, vitex, and pennisetum
Charles Mayer3/4Constructing a wall between the new and native landscapes resolved the challenge of creating an art lawn on this site given its environmental sensitivities. Careful plant selections – bayberry, Eastern baccharis, American elder, chokeberry, highbush blueberry, and buddleja – help blur the boundary between the two areas; the plantings also tie together this garden and the front of the house
4/4This is an extract from The Landscape of Home: In the Country, By the Sea, In the City by Hollander Design Landscape Architects, published by Rizzoli on March 12 (£42.50). Available to pre-order now.
