Cape Cod - Beach House

“We cannot go on indefinitely reviving revivals. Architecture must move on, or die. Its new life comes from the tremendous changes in the social and technical fields during the last generations...there is no finality in architecture---only continuous change.” Professor, Dr. h.c. Walter Gropius

Provincetown is a thin strip of low-rise buildings at the curved tip of Cape Cod. Despite its known bohemian summering artist, writers, painters, and a historic gay community – the town still has little contemporary architecture. Only a few steps away from a masterwork of 20th-century architecture by Walter Gropius this project takes form.

This 2400 SF Beach House is located at the far end of the geographically exquisite Provincetown, on a dune facing a salt marsh and a mile-long stone breakwater. It is a two-story structure with 3 bedrooms, loft like living/dining/kitchen area, large terrace and covered balcony spaces up above. The contours & curvature of the land combined with the city’s 23 feet height limit were used to develop a snug, intimate relationship between the architecture and the site.

Upon arrival one enters a one story sculptural volume wrapped in wood & faceted like a piece of rock as if it was just washed to the shore by the ocean. A glass-bridge structure connects a guest suite at the entry to the master suite over a double height living room down below. The master bedroom is wrapped in Ipe wood on walls, ceiling & floor with a clearstory, terrace and views of the beach. It is the master bathroom however that is very special, intimate, warm and almost Swedish sauna-like with the Crystalline Bathtub & Sink faceted just like the space itself.

An open space living, dining, kitchen enclosed by glass and large sliding doors on the lower floor has polished concrete floors extending to a terrace with stunning views of the Cape Cod-Bay and the breakwater structure across the street. It is only down the hill when the lower part of the house is visible composed of a transparent base and grey stucco retaining walls & planters.

A shared septic and geothermal heating & cooling system is in place serving the Beach House and 4 smaller two-bedroom beach houses to be built in the near future.