This is a new house built on an existing footprint close to the water that allows year round use.

The existing camp was quite charming on the inside, kind of dull on the outside, but it could not practically be upgraded to year round use because it had been lightly built and had no real foundation. Since the site was extremely restricted the planning board allowed us to build a new house on the existing house’s footprint, even though that footprint was very close to the water. While we expanded the house by the allowed 30% we attempted to keep the intimate cottage scale of the original building’s interior. We also tried to capture the sense of fun from being right on the water’s edge—and maximize the westerly views over the bay that make this site really spectacular.

The primary challenge was to get the spaces that the owners needed into the existing footprint, staying under the height limitation while still respecting scale of the surrounding buildings.