The site may be small, but the views are stunning. On the southwest coast of Maui, architect Mark de Reus took advantage of a narrow, 102-foot-wide lot by directing the eye, through a 6,000-square-foot home, out to three small islands in the distance.

He kept his design simple. “One of the things I’ve learned to appreciate is that restraint is good,” he says. “There’s a lot of elegance that comes through simplicity—it’s a nice, elegant solution.”

He maximized visibility and the indoor/outdoor living experience by placing a pool and spa at the leading edge overlooking the Pacific. He added an open lanai adjacent to it and a covered lanai next to that. “They merge together in one large, luxurious space,” de Reus says.

Behind the outdoor spaces are a casual living area, dining area, and kitchen. They integrate with the bigger lanai through sliding glass doors that disappear into walls. “The climate on that side of Maui means you can open it up and live in that luxurious air,” he says. “It’s one outdoor living area.”

The architect worked with land planner Don Vita of Vita Planning and Landscape Architecture, someone he’s collaborated with for 24 years, to address the lot. If one challenge was its narrowness, there were also the houses that flank it on either side. 

“The view is directional,” Vita says. “We had to deal with that and make sure it’s interesting and take advantage of it in as many places inside the home as possible.”

He placed plantings and walls strategically to block sound and sight to and from the homes next door. After all, people on Maui want to spend their time outside as much as possible, without a lot of visibility. “The climate is very nurturing: It feels just right for your skin, and there’s just enough salt spray in the air,” he says. “And the breezes are always there to moderate the temperature, so you end up living outside—and there’s a flow, inside to outside.”

The clients, a pair of attorneys from Sacramento, California, wanted a home that could double as an escape. They also wanted spaces that were not only easy to maintain but water-conscious, too, because the new house is on the dry side of the island. “There are northeast trade winds, so there’s a wet side and a dry side,” Vita says. “The dry side might get 10 inches of rain a year, but the other gets 115 inches.”

That led the landscape planner to work with a water budget, and he used most of it at the entry. There, he placed water-intensive gingers and heliconia for their color, scent, and deep green foliage that gives a lush and tropical feel. 

Carefully placed coconut palms frame views from bedrooms and outdoor spaces. Below the lanai, Vita allowed kiawe and grasses to work their way up to the house. “The thing about designers is that they have to design,” he says. “Sometimes, the genius is to leave it be.”

The architect addressed scale and proportion in his arrangement and composition of living and transition spaces. “You come in from the auto court into a cozy foyer,” de Reus says. “Then you transition from compression to expansion into a larger volume that’s the main gathering space.”

That larger area needed to be a comfortable fit for friends and family. The architect defined it by maximizing its opening for the most drama, merging interior spaces into exterior ones.

“Then you add the materiality. The client liked the use of rich woods,” he says. “We used a number of them on the interior because they’re dark and rich in character.”

While the coral stone cladding the home was imported, walls and ceilings are native ohia wood. Most of the interior furnishings were selected by Marion Philpotts-Miller and Anne Tanaka of Philpotts Interiors in Honolulu. Among the woods chosen for furnishings were ohia, koa, mango, and monkeypod. “You support your local craftsmen in the middle of a pandemic by having things made right on the island,” Philpotts-Miller says.

A cabinetmaker created the oversized, live-edge dining room table from the trunk of a local tree. The headboard in the master suite and the vanities in the bath are both koa, one of the most sought-after and overcut woods on the island. “It’s like royalty,” she says. “It has dark and medium colors, mixed.”

A sense of calm is the overwhelming takeaway from the interiors, and that’s no accident. “There are soulful and restful components, like a yoga and meditation area upstairs,” says Philpotts-Miller. “It’s a retreat where the clients can find quiet time—a nice approach to designing a vacation home.”

And if they feel a sudden need for drama, they can always step out into views of the Pacific. 

Learn more about the project team

For more information visit dereusarchitects.com; philpotts.net

A 1980s Arts & Crafts–inspired home in Greenwich, Connecticut, has found new life in the classical vernacular.

That’s because New Canaan–based Wadia Associates advised their clients to gut the interior, rethink the flow of its space, and orient its rooms to 270-degree views of Long Island Sound. When they did, the former Shingle Style gave way to a more traditional look and feel.

It was a complete overhaul with an artisanal approach. The designers reimagined the home’s exterior by brightening its shingles with a light gray tone. Inside, they chose natural light over darker detailing, and delivered a soft touch with all-new fabrics and fixtures. 

“We took away some of the Arts & Crafts influence inside and added more of a classical approach to the details,” says Saranda Berisa, Wadia’s director of interior design and decoration. “Now there’s air and breath to the home where before the molding was dark and heavy.”

The clients are a young Indian couple with three middle schoolers. They wanted to show an Eastern influence inside and outside their house, and display their collection of Indian art. “They wanted more of their heritage in the space, and with a classical backdrop it’s more conducive to their desires,” Berisa says. “They wanted to feel like they were home.”

The main architectural challenge was to rethink the “L” shape of the main living spaces, kitchen, dining area, and living room. “Functionally, the task was to open up a plan that was convoluted, so that it flows,” says Wadia architect Robert Butscher. “Now each of its three zones has its own identity.”

Case in point: the breakfast room, where a decorative pattern on the domed ceiling offers an Indian touch. “There are plaster moldings applied to the ceiling, and that gives it a light, delicate, geometric design that echoes more traditional Indian design in a modern way,” he says. “It’s an eight-sided pyramid.”

The kitchen features a center island countertop with colors reminiscent of the sea—blues, greens, and yellows. A surrounding all-white Glassos counter freshens it up. Kitchen cabinets alternate between walnut and dark-teal tones. “There’s a wood grain to the cabinetry, with a high-design veneer,” Berisa says.

In the living area the designers added 24-foot-wide sliding windows that open up to a new porch. The addition not only doubles the indoor/outdoor living area space, but also nearly snugs up to the swimming pool, California-style. “Now it’s a space that’s open on two sides and has a very warm, sheltering feeling. It fits the balance between indoors and out,” project architect Melanie Smith says.

That sheltering feeling is enhanced by a hand-carved teak ceiling designed by a Wadia architect and then fabricated in Italy. Again, it’s a touch that emphasizes the couple’s Indian roots. “It was from an image that the clients saw on a trip while we were in the middle of construction; they came back with a photo,” she says.

The designers added a cupola over the main staircase to bring in natural light at the stairhead above, much like a skylight. Then they opened the ceilings up more. And they reshaped the fireplaces for more classical references. “The assignment was to take a good house and make it a great house,” Butscher says. 

It’s functional because there were three children to consider. But it’s designed for having fun, too, since entertaining was one of the goals of the client. “It lends itself to the objective of vibrant colors, with a little bit of flair and fun,” Berisa says. “It’s a party house: They definitely like to have people come in and enjoy the fruits of their labor.”

A marble entry invites guests in. There’s sparkling Venetian plaster, walls painted by an artist, plus a quartzite countertop and a mosaic floor in the bath. “We used a lot of jewel tones to pay homage to their heritage,” she says. “There’s a rich texture with wallpaper, and a lot of lush treatments in terms of plasters.”

The 9,000-square-foot house took about 18 months to complete, in the middle of the pandemic. But now, almost all of its rooms have views out to Long Island Sound, and they still manage to flow easily from one to another. “It’s breezy and fresh and doesn’t feel big either on the inside or outside,” Butscher says.

As they renovated, the architects made significant technological updates to the house. “We ended up with a fabulous, high-tech, and beautiful home, with the detailing and feeling of an intimate resort,” Smith says. “It’s lit up beautifully at night—it’s almost like a little jewel box on the sound.”

Inside, it’s also a series of high-style spaces, with drama to spare. And while its gables outside may still say Arts & Crafts, the classical makeover of this home is light, airy, and open. 

For more information, visit wadiaassociates.com

A long, narrow site along Cancun’s Golden Mile drove the design of a new Waldorf Astoria on the beachfront there.

A typical response might have been to insert a simple horizontal bar of a hotel on that strip of sand between mangrove and sea.

But SB Architects principal Stefano Falbo is no typical hospitality architect. And EDSA principal Astrid Hoffmann is no ordinary landscape architect. The two firms work together regularly, often with pleasing results. “It’s always a mutual collaboration,” Falbo says. “Sometimes we call them in, and sometimes we get the same from them.”

The project started with a 2017 visit by the architects, who walked the site, talked to the client, and then wrapped their heads around the size, scope, and program for the hotel and spa.

Then came the edgy part, when the architects initiated a design charrette on site. Over a couple of days, they rolled out sketch paper and drew up a series of solutions for their clients. “You’re drawing by hand – and creating a vision right there,” he says. “It would have taken twice the time in the office.”

They followed an agreed-upon design footprint, with client decisions made on the spot. “It’s so valuable in a short period of time with all the stakeholders there,” Falbo says of the charrette process. “There it was – the combination of master plan and architecture.”

They’d sketched out a hotel with 173 ocean-facing rooms on that narrow strip of land, plus lobby, ballroom, meeting rooms and restaurants. “We wanted to break it up and articulate it, almost in a horseshoe shape,” he says. “We did not want a long, monotonous, and boring space.”

EDSA’s Hoffman was responsible for everything except the building itself. That meant the entrance sequence, the welcome center and guardhouse, the eight-minute drive through an otherwise untouched stretch of mangrove, the porte cochere, and the spa area.

“The site is a jagged line between the dunes and the mangrove,” she says. “It’s about the water, the flow, and the lines that cross the natural elements.”

The entire site is 865 acres of dense growth. The landscape architects didn’t touch the mangrove except for the road leading to the hotel. All around the structure, they used low-maintenance plantings, adaptive to the climate and natural to the place. Hoffmann’s material palette for the hardscape was a native stone, including the pools.

“It’s a very natural environment, immersed in the mangrove – you feel like you’re away from the world and in a wellness-oriented space,” she says.

Once an arriving guest has gone through a decompression phase from highway through mangrove to hotel entrance, an element of surprise awaits. “We wanted to create the ‘Wow!’ effect there,” Falbo says. “In a guest’s mind, the thought should be: ‘Yes – I arrived at the right place.’”

Hoffmann is a little more succinct. “I would say it’s a window to the sea,” she says.

And to the designers’ credit, it’s a sensitive triumph of nature over the built environment.

Interior designer Meghann Day knows how to conduct her due diligence.

For the Conrad Tulum Riviera Maya, on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, she spent six years studying the local culture, materials, and environment – both natural and manmade. She put them all together for the resort’s interiors, including lobby, guestrooms, restaurants, meeting rooms, pools, and spa.

Everything has a natural touch, sourced regionally. “All the materials are local – all the stone and wood – and tie back to the area,” Day, a partner at HBA San Francisco, says. “The client loves art, so there’s local art with the Mayan architecture.”

The first big idea was an ocean greeting as soon as a door opens – whether to the lobby or a guestroom. It’s all about the indoor/outdoor experience – expansive in the lobby, intimate in the guestroom. Either way, a guest is immediately connected to wide open spaces.

From the lobby there’s a direct sight line out to the distant ocean, framed by rows of palm trees lining a low, still body of water. “To the left and right there are louvres where the wind blows through – they tie back to the history of the area too,” she says. “There are art installations at each end, reaching back into Mayan history, as you step down to the ocean experience.”

The lobby ceiling is high, though not so high as an airport, for a carefully crafted feeling of intimacy. Three huge rope lighting fixtures drop down five feet from the ceiling, delivering a human scale to the space. “They’re soft, not hard, and there’s movement to them,” she says. “And the entry doors may be large, but the wood is a medium finish that feels nice and airy.”

Wood in both lobby and guestrooms is a native Tzalam, with a warm, walnut tone. Stone in the guestroom floors and walls is black granite; in the lobby it’s limestone with touches of granite.

The entire complex is surrounded by undeveloped mangroves, with roadways designed to rise up and allow native wildlife to pass freely below. But the resort’s also close to the ocean, with each guestroom facing it. “Every single person has a view of the ocean, which is spectacular,” she says.

Better yet, shower doors open to palm fronds and sky, and a sunken tub drops below the deck of each room. “We wanted to make sure that each guest had that indoor outdoor experience on every floor,” she says.

The crowning achievement at this resort, though, lies not in the lobby or the guestrooms, but in a calming spa. “When you walk in, if it rains, the water comes down naturally,” she says. “It’s a cenote, and it’s what Tulum is known for – a cave with water below and a spherical opening to allows rainwater in.”

Guests meander through the spa on wooden planks, blue sky open above. Textures inside massage areas are clad in Tzalam, and floor-to-ceiling windows open to the landscape but still afford privacy.

Day reinvented the cenote experience in a modern way. An outdoor pool is Mayan-inspired – it’s a palapa for relaxing. Lighting fixtures are woven – an ode to baskets found in local markets. A 15-foot opening spreads out above a chaise-lined pool below that’s precisely the same size “It’s all so soothing and peaceful,” she says.

Add a post-massage cup of green tea – and a five-minute staring session with a curious iguana, as I did – and you’ve got the ultimate Tulum experience.

“I would call it a wellness refuge,” Day says. “It’s a refuge first because of the beautiful spa, and then because of the ocean.”

After six years of study, she got it right.

Greg Allen is an attorney in Montgomery, Alabama, who bootstrapped himself up from a law school student at night to a major player in the South’s legal profession.

“I grew up in Georgia and moved to Alabama in 1976—in a 1960 pickup truck with a bed and a chair,” he says. “Now I’m a principal in a law firm with 100 lawyers in Atlanta, Montgomery, and Mobile.”

Along the way, he picked up a serious hobby—in, around, and under the water. “I started scuba diving 35 years ago,” he says. “I’ve been all over the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.”

Spearfishing is his sport of choice, and he’s staked out Orange Beach, Alabama, as his headquarters. For years, he viewed the Gulf from his unit in the Porto del Sol condominiums. Then a one-and-a-half-acre lot next door came up for sale. “The economy went south, and I was able to buy it,” he says.

He’d been involved in renovations for downtown Montgomery, so he knew Phillip Pouncey, whom he calls “as good a builder as I’ve ever met.” When asked for a good architect, Pouncey steered Allen toward Birmingham-based Chris Reebals, president of Christopher Architects & Interiors.

Reebals has a rarified pedigree all his own. A 1992 graduate of Auburn University, he was in Samuel Mockbee’s first class, where the Rural Studio was born. It’s now a world-renowned, off-campus design/build program that’s created more than 200 community projects in and around Hale County—and educated 1,200 hands-on architecture students in the process “I was in the thesis class,” Reebals says. 

Dialog with stakeholders is key to the Rural Studio’s success, and getting to know clients personally is a big part of Reebals’s ethos. In Greg Allen’s case, that meant not just his passion for boating, diving, and spearfishing—but for his wife, children, and grandchildren too. “Family was massive,” Reebals says. “We wanted to create a place, a refuge to enjoy with the family, and a legacy to pass on to them one day.”

Allen and his wife are big fans of Bermuda architecture. So Reebals set out to create something with clean lines, open spaces, and natural light. “It resonates with the soul,” he says.

Alas, Allen declined his first design. The attorney wanted to build up, not out, because of the potential for hurricane surge. But the next design Reebals delivered was an out-of-the-park homer—a three-story tower with garage and storage on the lower level, living areas on the second level, and bedrooms, office, and 360-degree views atop it all.

It’s solid as a rock. Reebals’s material of choice was concrete, two feet thick in some places, along with a coat of plaster. Concrete pilings reach down 60 feet below grade, and the roof is clad in sturdy terracotta tile from Ludowici. “They haven’t made a hurricane that can penetrate it yet,” Allen says. “The builder said: ‘I hope it doesn’t go out of style, because you’ll never be able to move it or take it down.’”

Inside, interior designer Joanna Goodman, also an Auburn grad, designed the home for durability, ease of maintenance, and beauty. Kitchen surfaces are quartz, custom cabinets are sophisticated but rustic, and there are touches of perky cypress and pops of wallpaper. “It’s all low maintenance, with performance fabrics for wet bathing suits—it’s all cleanable,” she says.

Her color palette takes its cues from the blues and whites outside on the horizon. And she worked in a nostalgic marine theme as well. “There’s an old diving helmet on a concrete pedestal, and nautical items are displayed as part of the décor,” she says.

Allen asked his architect to design a house for diving—with an electric cart, a covered dock for diving gear, and a tower—and he got it all. Under the dock cover is an outdoor shower, a fish-cleaning station, and a system for cleaning diving gear with solvent.

Now he can get out to the Gulf in no time flat. “It’s designed so I can back a cart up to the boat and load it up,” Allen says.

As for his kids and grandkids, they’ve always got the clay tennis court—and the volleyball court, too. 

For more information, visit christopherai.com

Arc was designed and built with the yacht-lover in mind.

It’s a high-end collection of 17 sky villas located in Providenciales, part of the South Bank community in the Turks and Caicos. A number of South Bank’s villas come with their own private yacht slips. The fully operational marina at South Bank offers 54 dock slips up to 60 feet, a 400-foot-long main dock, with six super-yacht slips up to 150 feet to be added soon.

We’re talking about a full-service marina with maintenance capability on any boat, plus dry dock and fuel – anything the well-heeled boat owner might need, including a concierge service. “You can have your boat cleaned up after a trip out on the ocean, on demand,” says Ingo Reckhorn, Director of Windward and Arc at South Bank. “There’s a centralized slip – you can go out, come back, then have it cleaned up and put it in storage, all with zero hassle.”

It’s a key amenity at South Bank, where 38 townhomes also lay claim to their own yacht slips. South Bank also offers two restaurants and bars, rental and property management services, plus tennis and pickleball courts. Then there’s the manmade lagoon, connected to the ocean. “It’s beachfront and salt water,” he says. “You can use the beach and not be affected by waves.”

Arc is six stories tall, and designed by Piero Lissoni, an Italian architect originally from Milan, now with a satellite office in New York. He specializes in high-end contemporary architecture for resorts and hotels in New York, Miami, and London. This is his first project in the Caribbean.

“Arc is special – it’s not a condo building, because we’ve tried to create a villa-like lifestyle combined with 360-degree views,” Reckhorn says. “The ocean is to the south and the flats and the lagoon are to the north.”

Lissoni’s assignment was to take advantage of the views indoors and out, and all around – using 50/50 indoor-outdoor spaces. Every villa has its own hot tub or pool – some have both – plus an outdoor kitchen, an outdoor shower, a garden. “It’s an indoor-outdoor lifestyle, elevated in a six-story building,” he says. “Some have pools up to 30 feet in length.”

The building is called Arc because its roofline is gently sloped up and down to look like an arc from the ocean. Its developer and architect were guided by two principles – first to create a building that was contemporary but soft in shape, with minimal impact on the natural setting. “We wanted a green building,” he says. “Each of its floors becomes smaller and smaller to lessen its impact.”

The other principle was to create units that have a very high ratio of outdoor-to-indoor space. “We wanted to transform a villa living experience to an elevated outlook, plus take advantage of the 360-degree views,” he says.

Reckhorn and his associates spent a great deal of time in planning, as they analyzed what the market desires in the Turks and Caicos were. They discovered that villa demand had grown stronger over the past few years. “So it was to be low density and villa-centric,” he says. “And it was driven by demand for more privacy and more space, and for multigenerational travel.”

Their overall site plan was centered around those ideas. “There are neighborhoods, and we have 2,000 feet of oceanfront footage and 19 oceanfront villas,” he says. “Then there’s the lagoon in the center for more waterfront.”

But yachts are the driving force behind this development. “From its location you can be out in the open water in 30 seconds, cruising or deep sea fishing, or exploring the islands in a heartbeat,” he says.

And if you’re not out on the Atlantic when the sun’s going down, consider the penthouse at Arc. It’s 12,700 square feet with five bedrooms and five-and-a-half baths. There’s a pool as well as a hot tub, plus multiple outdoor showers.

Eighty-five feet above the island with 360-degree waterfront views, it also come with its own super-yacht slip. “You can look down on your yacht directly from the penthouse while you’re enjoying the sunset over the water and having a drink,” he says. “It’s quite stunning.”

And quite a curve of the Arc.

An out-of-date, 1950s Laguna Beach home has been recast from a less-than-stylish, imposing structure into a graceful, Cape Cod–like residence.

It took a dedicated team of architects, interior designers, and landscape architects to make that happen for their Arizona-based clients, a family of five in search of a summertime retreat.

Architect Chris Light, principal in the Newport Beach firm that bears his name, led the charge. “They were looking to purchase this property on the ocean, and I toured it with them and their real estate agent,” he says. “We talked a lot about its potential.”

Light was familiar with the complex Laguna Beach zoning restrictions imposed by both the city and the California Coastal Commission. “I explained what they could and couldn’t do, and they talked about what they wanted to do and see,” he says. “It seemed like a good match, and I started working on floor plans and elevations.”

The original, 4,000-square-foot house boasted good bones and a traditional form, all on a 5,500-square-foot lot. The architect took it down to footprint and walls, then rebuilt atop its rock-solid foundation. “The lower part is bedrock, which is unusual to find these days,” says landscape architect Mike Dilley at MDZA Landscape Architecture in Laguna Beach. “It sits on rock and not on sand.”

The three-level home rises from beach to courtyard and then to upper levels. “You park and enter the courtyard, and then you’re into the main floor of the house on the ground level,” he says. “Then you’re just a few steps down to the beach, and that’s the most engaging part—the interface with the water.”

Dilley’s been practicing landscape architecture on high-end residential homes for more than 30 years now. He specializes in exteriors, infrastructure, lighting, planting, and designs for fireplaces, barbecues, and outdoor dining areas. But he’s also got an eye for a lasting material palette. “We used bluestones for paving, and the planters were made in Detroit with galvanized ironwork,” he says. “It’s very classic, and much more of a timeless house because of that.”

Timeless is the keyword for this project, from both architect Light and interior designers from Laguna Beach-based Fullen Enany Design. Founded 20 years ago, that firm works mostly on custom homes in Dana Point, Corona del Mar, and Newport Beach. For this project they tapped into the talents of a trio of interior designers, including founder and owner Michael Fullen, owner and interior designer Omar Enany, and interior designer Kelsey Bigelow.

The three were tasked with creating a conservative home on the often uber-modern California coast, and establishing the tone of the new house with harmonious intent. “They gave us architectural plans, and we had a couple of interviews,” Enany says. “They said they wanted a more traditional interior because it’s traditional on the exterior.”

It may be a three-story affair, but atop the home’s roof deck sits an office and bath. Below is the second floor with master, laundry, and three bedrooms, and the ground level offers kitchen, dining area, family room, and patio.

Aligning it all to the human scale was a paramount goal—especially on the lower level. Rooms are comfortably sized, with openly proportioned seating. “We maximized the space—there are different seating groups to accommodate everybody,” Bigelow says. 

The color palette is fairly neutral, with beige and off-white tones, white oak floors, and white marble. “It’s clean and minimalistic,” she says. 

Interestingly, their clients chose not to fill their walls with works of art. “They thought the ocean was enough,” Fullen says.

Light’s major architectural challenge was to open up the narrow spaces inside so that the family’s living experience didn’t feel tunnel-like. “The biggest thing I do is scale spaces together so there’s not a giant living area and small bedrooms,” he says. “I try to proportion it so overall it’s a big house, but the rooms all feel related to each other.”

He opened up walls and reconfigured the interiors with a two-story stairwell and the entry on one side. “We pulled the walls down so it feels like you’re circulating into a great room,” he says. “We opened up the kitchen, dining room, and living room instead of leaving them all separate, like they were.”

By adopting the Cape Cod style outside, Light broke up the middle portion of the entire compound with a different slope of roof, also articulated for a more human scale. “It looks now like it’s been there forever—and has been nicely taken care of all that time,” he says. “We didn’t make it look like it flew down from space and landed there, or even like it’s a redo or a remodel.” 

Instead, it looks timeless on its oceanfront site. And that, Light says, is the goal of all his architecture. 

Learn more about the project team

Architect: C. J. Light Associates
Interior design: Fullen Enany Design
Landscape architecture: MDZA

Three floods in 12 years led Brad Herman to an abrupt epiphany about his Coconut Grove home: “After Hurricane Irma in 2017, there were three to four feet of water in the house and I said: ‘I’m over this,’ and I decided to raze the house and build a new one.”

He endured a final six-month cleanup at his 1923 Spanish Mediterranean Revival on a canal 900 feet from Biscayne Bay, then toured Miami to scope out new homes and their material palettes. One in particular resonated. It was designed by Jacob and Melissa Brillhart of Brillhart Architecture.

“I contacted Jake,” he says. “And I discovered that what I wanted and what he could do gelled.” Herman wanted an urban industrial look, with materials that could stand up to South Florida’s rising waters, steamy climate, and salty air. Since the Brillharts had been practicing their savvy brand of tropical modernism since 2007, they were a natural choice. “We bounced some ideas off each other,” he says. “It came down to concrete, glass, and steel.”

It was a smart move. Miami’s sea level is expected to rise 10 to 17 inches over the next few years. There’s a FEMA mandate that a new home’s first floor must rise 12 feet above grade. So the initial design idea was a no-brainer: Build the house above any flood threat.

Stilts were one possible option, but Herman demurred—and his architects looked back to Swiss modernist Le Corbusier. “This was built with three Corbusian sculptural columns, or cilopes, at the bottom in a grid,” says Jacob. “There’s a stiffness to them, and they’re large enough to house storage space in the garage.”

Then there’s a series of slender steel columns for further support of two upper levels. The ground floor is also home to a small, artificial-turf-clad soccer field for Herman’s son. Now when sea waters rise, damage will be minimal.

“The bigger idea is that the ground plane is sort of an afterthought,” Brillhart says. “You come in past a coral rock wall, saved from the original homesite, to concrete piers that hold up the house. There’s practicality, but it’s beautiful.”

Herman now drives under his house and ascends a stairway to a breezy, open-air deck and lap pool. “The deck on the first level with the pool is 3,000 square feet, and we added another 500 square feet on the porch above,” says Melissa Brillhart. “It’s a total of about 6,000 square feet, with the understory deck and the porches above.”

Besides the Brazilian Ipe deck on the first level are enclosed living and dining areas, as well as kitchen, gym, bath, bedroom, and powder room. The master suite, two bedrooms, and two baths are above that. “Every bedroom and every living space has outdoor space connected to it,” Jacob says. “It’s only one room deep, so they’re immediately connected with balconies, decks, and windows—it’s an important part of living in the tropics.”

The material palette was limited but imaginative. “I wanted a minimalistic house, but not one without any warmth,” Herman says. “The entire interior upstairs have vaulted wooden ceilings, and there are exposed glass and concrete walls.”

The concrete was board-formed from Western cedar. “That gives an incredible texture to the home, so it doesn’t look like a concrete box,” he says. “People ask: ‘What kind of wood is that?’ because it has the texture of rough cedar.”

The Brillharts worked with general contractor Martin Rodriguez to bring the concrete to life. Trained as an architect, Rodriguez sees eye-to-eye with Jacob. “We have a real cohesion,” Rodriguez says. “And we really care about our concrete—it has to be perfect, poured at the right temperature on the right day.”

The roof is steel-framed and copper-covered, with overhangs kicking out three-and-a-half feet so rain doesn’t run down the structure’s side. Insulation was added below the copper to keep it cool, with plywood beneath. “It’s an Oreo sandwich with black plywood, white high-density foam insulation, and then the roof,” Herman says. “It’s seven inches thick and rated R-40—it’s incredibly efficient and it gives us a nice, thin roofline.”

In essence, as Melissa Brillhart says, the structure itself is the architecture. “All our projects use the chemistry of space as ingredients—they create atmospherics that affect us emotionally,” she says. “You can feel the site, weather, material, light, color, craftsmanship and local hands doing the work.”

Adds her husband: “You feel the weather with the overhangs,” he says. “The house is ready for the rain, and you feel the wetness.”

Then there are the serendipitous beams of light that penetrate, cathedral-like, between deck boards. “It’s a happy accident,” he says. “The natural world did its thing.”

But it had huge help from a material-driven team of architects. 

For more information, visit brillhartarchitecture.com

Blustery winds and an idyllic view guided the collaborative design of a luxury rereat on the island of O‘ahu for a married couple, their four children, and their extended family.

“The site is beautiful, but there are high winds,” says architect Peter Vincent, who’s practiced in Honolulu for 30-plus years. “Having a chef’s kitchen and outdoor dining out of the wind was part of the program.”

The rest of it? There was the renovation of a developer’s 2010 spec house—and a new guest house, swimming pool, and pavilion/dining area/gathering space.

All are aligned along a walkway laid in Peruvian limestone—a travertine path lined by an allée of palm trees—that leads eyes past beach and breakers to a pair of islands. “It separates the more private family spaces on the left and the entertainment spaces on the right,” Vincent says. 

The clients searched long and hard to find this site. They looked on the Big Island, only to discover cliff-dwelling homes, not beachfront properties. When they came across this house and its adjacent vacant lot, they rented it for a week—a test drive of sorts. 

Within three days, they’d arrived at how to lay out the property. “We knew we had to buy the adjacent lot, put the pool behind it, and the guest house behind that,” the husband says.

Once it had all been designed and built, Vincent recommended local landscape architect Rick Quinn, principal of HHF Planners, and San Francisco–based Surfacedesign. Its founder, landscape architect James Lord, is a graduate of Harvard’s landscape architecture program who cites Italian architect Carlo Scarpa and Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx as key influencers.

Here, that kind of design heft shows up—in spades. “We had a meeting in Los Angeles, and Surfacedesign presented the idea of a tide pool garden,” Vincent says. “I’d envisioned a courtyard and a fabulous landscape, and that’s what they brought to the table, with different levels of pools inside and out.”

Lord and Surfacedesign created a seamless interaction between landscape and architecture, with coral walls that blur the lines between inside and out. They got rid of paved black surfaces, allowing driving on the lawn, an infrequent occurrence here anyway. Then they transformed the entire site into gardens—on the land and in the water. “The way the stones float and meet is the way Scarpa’s designs work,” Lord says.

“I looked at tide pools that trap bodies of water, where little sea creatures come in and are protected,” he says. “A series of low walls out on the lawn act as interfaces with the beach—and we lowered the pools as they move back, so you’re protected and do not lose the view.”

The pool pavilion features a dining lanai, with a gathering space inside. It was designed with 12-foot columns and a 25-foot tall roof. “That’s the height limit, and it’s in keeping with the existing two-story house,” Vincent says. “It’s a really large roof that signifies Hawaiian design, and having the wall height be that tall allowed transparency for the view.”

The clients had looked at other properties on the windward side of the island, and found gusts that blow up to 30 miles per hour. So here, the wind drove the placement of their swimming pool. “The pavilion blocks the wind so we can enjoy the pool,” the husband says. “Conventional wisdom would be to put the pool closer to the beach, but we put it down behind the pavilion.”

It’s three feet below grade, and water flows from it down to a living pond. “Surfacedesign created an area between the pool and the living pond, for a sense of being one with the water and the plants and the property,” he says.

Behind the pavilion, the guest house feels a little lower, though it is 10 feet tall, with three bedrooms and its own interior living space. “It’s positioned so it looks over the pool, through the pool pavilion, and out to the ocean,” Vincent says. “It still feels connected but it’s buffered from the wind—it’s an oasis and a courtyard.”

The client’s wife is a garden and plant lover, and was involved from the get-go in selections both outside and in. “With James, we came up with the idea of plantings in the bathrooms of the guest house,” she says. “There are orchids when you’re taking a shower, because I’m fascinated by blooming plants.”

Outside, the complex is a series of experiential excursions from the moment of entry. “You arrive, passing through a wall at the street,” Lord says. “There’s a second wall inside, and you see out to the islands in the ocean.” Then there’s a secret garden, a new wall, a tidal pool, and another wall. Finally, there’s the immersive blast from those Pacific winds.   

For more information, visit pva.com; sdisf.com; hhf.com.

A panoramic view of the Gulf of Mexico – and a marriage proposal in Santorini – inspired architect/interior designer Adina Hall when she kicked off the makeover of a 1980s Clearwater Beach condo.

It’s on the 14^th floor of a 20-story tower, a corner unit with a balcony that faces south and west. Her clients, Chicago-based Matt and Korrie Sprenzel, got engaged on that Greek island in the Aegean Sea and married in 2020. So Hall placed photos of Santorini – bright white, deep blue, and great big – on the walls of their beachfront getaway.

“Some of the images were taken during their engagement,” Hall says. “It’s a nod to something meaningful to them personally.”

On a more atmospheric level are sunsets seen from the balcony every evening. The skies are never the same, and sundown provides a backdrop for family get-togethers. “At six o’clock, everybody gathers outside for a glass of wine – and every night it’s different,” she says. “Then the blinds come down.”

Pops of blue are everywhere inside – on walls, on throw pillows, on an L-shaped living room sofa and on a lounge chair that faces it. “The site, with the views of the Gulf of Mexico drove that,” Matt Sprenzel says. “She was also working with the window frames and doors that are a kind of aqua blue finish – she brought that palette inside.”

Floors of the condo are porcelain tile in a color that reflects sand on the beach below. In the living area, their planks are laid on an angle to guide people toward that corner view, In the kitchen, they’re aligned with counters and island to steer feet toward a door to the balcony.

Sprenzel spent many of his younger days in a similar corner condo on the building’s sixth floor, one his father bought as a family vacation spot. When this one became available in 2019, Sprenzel bought it sight-unseen – because he knew all about its views.

The interior, though, was another story. “The space was extremely dated, with popcorn ceilings and floral valances, and pink and green kitchen granite,” Hall says. “It was a mishmash of styles in one place – an eyesore.”

The Sprenzels totally gutted it, then asked Hall for a clean, modern, and minimalist design. “We wanted openness, to be able to see the Gulf of Mexico from the kitchen,” Matt says. “That cost us in terms of storage space in overhead cabinets, but it’s open to the landscape from the living room, dining area, and kitchen.”

Hall brought in massive teak roots for coffee and side tables in the living room – and a hall table at the entry. Above that is a painting by San Diego artist Irina Negulescu called “Water Gypsy.” Its focus is on a woman suspended underwater in a deep blue sea.

Since the 2,000-square-foot condo is a family getaway, Hall was careful to accommodate the needs of the Sprenzels’ seven kids and five grandchildren. “If the kids want to play, there’s room,” says Korrie Sprenzel. “There are bunk beds for four girls, and still walking space so they don’t feel crowded.”

The most surprising aspect of the design is that Hall did it all remotely from Chicago, while she monitored images sent by her clients. When it was completed, she came down for an extended visit. There, she had the opportunity to experience her own design principles, on site.

“The first time she went down with her family, she said: ‘This place is beautiful,’” says Matt Sprenzel.

And she was right.

Image Credits: Christina Strong Photography.