Milestone

A granite milestone distinguished an otherwise ordinary lot, one in a series of historic markers along a road connecting two villages. Just as milestones punctuate the roadside, the house is conceived as a regularly spaced series of insertions in the landscape. The resulting sequence of solid and void defines private and public areas of the home. Solid volumes contain bedrooms and service spaces, while glazed and screened gaps between accommodate the living room and screened porch. This spatial configuration promotes circulation within public spaces, minimizing hallways for an efficient plan. Metal standing seam shingles define the solid volumes and carry onto the interior walls of the living spaces, connecting them with the outside. Their projected vertical seams and low-profile, flat horizontal seams emphasize the verticality of the solid volumes as they spring from the ground, especially as the sun rakes across their surface.

The house is sited so the massing’s cadence runs parallel and synchronizes with the milestones. Floors lie two feet above grade to safeguard against inundation from the harbor across the road and raise the foundations above the high water table. In deference to the harbor’s ecology, plantings graduate from low-maintenance native species to more manicured lawns as they progress from the harbor toward the house. A compact footprint also reduces impact on the site.

In a community with a rich heritage of domestic architecture, the house connects to its place not though a reproduction of traditional styles, but by referencing the mechanics of the town’s early way-finding system. Drawing on the most immediate historic reference, the milestone, yields a design that is more relevant and conceptually bound to its context.