September 1, 2015
Atlantic Drive Double Gable
South Beach, Edgartown, MA
This water-view property hosts a suite of new-build shingle-style elements: a main house, a detached carriage house, a guesthouse with an attached carriage house, and various outdoor-living areas. The clients’ program is distributed among these, reducing the scale of each building and maintaining the look and feel of historic New England homesteads.
The double-gabled shingle-style main residence is known as an upside-down house. Because a road and dunes separate the property from the sea, only the rooms on the upper floor enjoy ocean vistas. The major public spaces and the master suite, therefore, had to be upstairs, though they would usually sit below.
Challenges with such a scheme include designing desirable ground floors and creating convenient, attractive vertical circulation. Connecting the lower level to a covered porch and down to the pool, pergolas, cabana, and outdoor kitchen helped enliven that floor. A staircase hidden within one of the twinned water-facing bays, meanwhile, solved the circulation problem.
Upstairs, the house is essentially one-room deep, so every space—from kitchen to dining area, great room to master suite—has superlative water views and access to the second-floor deck. These spaces are finished in sophisticated seaside style, with antique wood-beamed ceilings, beadboard and wainscoted walls, and polished mahogany floors.
The combined carriage and guest house—with kitchen, living, and dining areas, plus four bedrooms and a covered porch—completes the campus. Like the larger residence, it was designed in the area-appropriate shingle style, with a double gable and an upside-down layout, which once again takes best advantage of water views.