This beachfront home offers unique design opportunities and complex environmental challenges. Relatively rare siting for homes, oceanfront sites present an almost mutually exclusive relationship between openness to the shear beauty of the place – the fine lines of drifting sand and the multicolored glow of the western setting sun, and resistance to the inherent danger of the place's natural elements – the rising tides of storm surges and unabated high wind.
The design for this home embraces the dichotomy – it is design to both catch the sunsets and summer breezes while allowing for storm surges to simply pass-through. The entire lower floor is designed as a knock-out system, designed to give-way to the pressures of rising sea water, allowing the structure to remain in-place upon its deeply set pile footings as the sea washes in/out during a heavy storm.
