N-01 The program
What the house had to do
The clients, a family of five who sail, asked for a house that lives outdoors eight months of the year and closes down to a warm core in winter. The answer was a pavilion plan. Living, sleeping and guest wings sit under one long cantilevered roof that opens south over the pool terrace to the bay.
The site did most of the talking. Setbacks pinched the buildable area into a wedge, so the plan turns its long glass face to the water and its closed masonry back to the road. Every bedroom gets the horizon. The road gets a quiet wall.
N-02 The materials
The palette, and why
- Board-formed concrete plinth
- The anchor of the house, poured against rough-sawn fir so the grain shows in the finished walls.
- Thermally modified walnut soffits
- The underside of the cantilevered canopy: warm overhead and stable in a marine climate.
- Bronze-anodized glazing
- Floor-to-ceiling lift-slide walls on the south face. The frames disappear at dusk.
- Lime plaster interiors
- Hand-troweled with no paint sheen, so light moves across it all day.
- Honed basalt terrace
- One continuous surface from the living room to the pool edge, inside to out.
N-03 The timeline
As it actually ran
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Feasibility 6 weeks
The shoreline setback variance was scoped before any design money was spent.
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Design & documents 9 months
Estimate checkpoints at 30, 60 and 90% kept the cantilever inside the budget.
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Permitting 5 months
Shoreline review ran long. We flagged it as a risk in month one and built it into the schedule.
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Construction 19 months
Marine winters cost us six pour windows. The move-in date moved once, in writing, by three weeks.
- Final cost vs. signed budget
- 3.9% over
- Move-in vs. promised date
- 3 weeks late, flagged in writing in month 11
Fictional figures for a demonstration project. Every project's results
N-04 The collaboration
With Marlowe & Sen Architects
Marlowe & Sen brought the pavilion idea, and we sat in their studio from the first sketch as the pricing conscience. The cantilever survived from concept to keys because it was engineered and priced at the schematic stage. Most cantilevers get cut at bid time. This one never had to be.
Marlowe & Sen Architects is a fictional firm, invented for this demo.
