The task: design a new single-story, modestly sized, two-bedroom house on a small lot on Cape Cod. In the short term it would be a weekend house, but in the not-too-distant future, our clients plan to retire there and age in place. Both are established professionals and needed workspaces now, but didn’t want those spaces to dominate the house. Given strict zoning code definitions, a workspace couldn’t in any way look like it could become an additional bedroom in the future, but workspaces couldn’t be in the main living space or the bedrooms, either, leaving us with a bit of a challenge. The solution: double up work and circulation space, with one desk in the hall to the bedroom, and a second work/reading nook at the end of the hall. (The guest bedroom doubles up as a third workspace). Another challenge: zoning restrictions placed extreme size limitations on the house, requiring special permits and variances for a house dwarfed by homes just a block or two away. Our solution was to create a building that looks significantly smaller from the street than it is; the long low roof across the front looks like a small beach shack, while behind, concealed from the street, lies most of the program footprint.
Aesthetically the house aims to marry the quaint traditional Cape Cod cottage with a more contemporary aesthetic. Weathered cedar trim replaces white painted trim, and upon closer inspection, the front porch can be seen to span a significant distance without any thick beam. Both interior and exterior exemplify minimal and highly restrained but considered detailing – the windows appear to be simple double hungs, with simple paned doors, but every window and door muntin is worked through to align perfectly. On the interior, a restrained but still vibrant palate mediates between the purely clean and modern and something more fun, with deep green cabinets against a maple floor echoing the colors of sand and sea.