Napeague

In the early postwar period a community of twenty-five small, simple, cottages was constructed into the rolling ocean dunes. This unpretentious enclave attracted fishermen, surfers, and beach lovers. In ensuing years the community became a gateway to an adjoining town, leading to increased traffic on the arterial roadway and railroad that pass along its northern edge. At the same time improved environmental awareness has brought attention to the risks of flooding from hurricanes that periodically inundate these lowlands. Tasked with replacing a weatherworn structure in this context, we were challenged to perpetuate the legacy of the snug beach cottage and its serenity of place despite present-day disturbances.

Road and rail traffic noise present the most pressing problem on this road-fronting lot. Though it may seem paradoxical at first, the new house actually lies closer to the road than its predecessor. However this arrangement, with the structure stretched across the property, shields a large back yard from offending noise and opens it up to sunlight from the southern sky. Walls facing the road are free of fenestration and extend into the side yards and above the roofline to enhance their shielding effect. An additional wall fragment in the front yard blocks sound at the entrance door, provides privacy, and defines the stoop. Research shows that mass optimizes walls’ sound-deadening properties, but conventional mass wall assemblies of stone or concrete are costly. Half-timber construction, common amongst the neighborhood’s original cottages, inspired an economical alternative. Historically, half-timbering substituted a primitive timber frame infilled with sticks and clay (waddle and daub) for traditional masonry. These readily-available and easily-worked materials created mass which primarily provided protection from the elements. In the this house, inexpensive, pliable sheets of mass-loaded vinyl, typically used to reduce sound transmission through floors, cover the building’s framed exterior walls. The sheets fold together at their seams to form regularly-spaced projecting ribs, not unlike the half-timbered frame, that set a cadence for the wood siding panels’s widths, the interior’s layout, and even the basis of light fixtures let into the walls’ thickness.

The threat of flooding from storms presents a secondary problem. The property sits at a low elevation only steps from the ocean and inches above ground water. Current flood maps require the first floor of new construction to rise eight feet above the natural grade. To reconnect the elevated house’s interior with the landscape, the front yard’s terrain is sculpted upward, restoring the property’s original windswept dunes in the process. The back yard connection is reestablished through a series of descending decks, stadium seating, and steps that meet the swimming pool and the fire pit, which are raised out of the ground to avoid the water table and to form bench seating.

Drawing on the community’s architectural heritage and half-timber construction by inventing a new wall assembly, while sustainably engaging the environment via the dunescape’s topography, we were able to reinvigorate the spirit of the small enclave’s sense of place while holding the restless outside world at bay.