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By Kymberly Taylor
Photography by Jennifer Hughes
Robert M. Gurney’s beach house architecture is distinct in its combination of strong forms, materials, and textures. A highly formal architecture, its street-side exterior combines two large rectangular volumes clad in recycled Delaware barnwood and white cedar shingles and a third volume with an aluminum ladder-like structure attached to its surface, creating a sculptural play of shimmering vertical and horizontal lines. The overall effect is a home that stands out next to its conventional neighbors along a ribbon of shoreline on Bethany Beach.
Gurney’s clients, whose main home is in McLean, Virginia, previously owned a vacation home in Bethany Beach that was not on the water. So, when a rare oceanfront lot with a modest home came up for sale, they leaped at the chance to buy it. Near retirement and with two grown children, they asked Gurney to design a spacious retreat engaging the ocean just steps away from their door.
Building on the beach is a complex undertaking. The neighborhood’s design review committee demanded that the architecture fit in aesthetically with the vernacular frame houses and bungalows nearby. Regulations set forth by Delaware Conservation and Environmental Control (DENREC) prevented any expansion past the footprint of the former home. Knowing that the family wanted a much larger 5,826-square-foot home, Gurney had a steep challenge on his hands.
Instead of a pre-determined style or plan, Gurney starts with math. “I begin with the spatial requirements. What does the client need in terms of space? How do they want to live in it?” He explains, “They wanted a home that engaged the ocean and the landscape, so all the primary spaces are on the ocean side. There is a back roof deck for western sunset views.”
In response to the architecture of the community, he broke the house down into a series of smaller gables joined by flat roofs, saying, “We were trying to keep the scale down.” He added a box-like structure with a roof deck to the back of the home. “The flat roof, composed of Ipe decking, ensures the couple can watch the sunset.”
A rigorous order throughout the home is never static but enlivened by asymmetry, color, and occasional playful forms. “I like things that are ordered and organized but not necessarily symmetrical, so I am always playing with that.”
An example of such play begins at the home’s front street-side entrance. A large oculus spans two distinct gable masses, adding light and an unexpected circular form. A glistening aluminum screen climbs up and over the back roof deck. “It becomes a trellis as it reaches the flat roof deck, turning into something else,” says Gurney. Another surprising form is a 13-foot deck facing the ocean. It runs almost the entire length of the house, creating a three-dimensionality, says Gurney, and, importantly, adding square footage when the doors are open. His clients needed every inch of living space, so if there was going to be a deck at all, he had to devise an innovative solution.
“DENREC rules prevented us from building into the dunes once we exceeded the footprint of the original home,” he explains. “The client wants you to maximize and optimize the space… to try to squeeze it all in and make it look good. It can be really hard,” he says. His solution was to cantilever the deck over the bare dune, so it floats in space supported by curving steel beams bolted to the home itself.
Innovative forms continue. Inside, one climbs to the main living area on a flight of stairs with floating treads. The eye is immediately drawn to a long, sleek marble kitchen island that almost runs the length of the room. Lined with custom cabinetry, the elongated island makes sense, for it is highly functional. “It is much more than an island,” explains Gurney. “It has seating and storage.”
The fireplace is set against a backdrop of hot rolled steel that is framed by the same recycled barnwood found on the home’s exterior. The mix of true materials adds tactility and texture. Some glisten and gleam, and others absorb light, charging the space with a subtle energy. Gurney’s compositions are deliberate. “I was trying to take many different elements and put them together: the recycled barn wood with hot rolled steel, the glass, and more refined marble and white oak.”
The light fixtures in the main living area hang like sculptural nests in the room’s sky. “Light fixtures are transparent enough that they don’t dominate, but they still have a presence in the space,” says Gurney. Carefully selected light fixtures become the only ornaments within each space, adding expression to the home’s four bedrooms and five and a half baths.
There is little to distract from the ocean in this home. Composed of neutrals and organic elements, the interior design reflects the minimal nature of the architecture, explains interior designers Jodi Macklin and Lauren Sparber. “The homeowner wanted it to speak to the architecture, to the beach, and to be warm,” says Macklin. Sparber points out organic elements, including the dining room table with the live edge and the table near the fireplace composed of petrified wood. Two custom area rugs provide subtle color; one is soft ochre with an abstract pattern that references the architecture’s modern style. She notes, “We kept all of the furnishings low so nothing detracts from the view.”
The walls are mostly bare, devoid of trim, baseboards, and molding of any kind. “There are clean lines. The idea is that the view becomes the most important thing, without any fussy moldings and things that may distract from the view,” notes Gurney. Upon inspection, the walls do not touch the floor but hover just above it. A quarter-inch gap or “reveal” delineates the different materials, explains Gurney. “The idea is to separate the two materials. It is harder to build this than to build trim and moldings that can cover up imperfections,” he explains.
The home is illuminated by a vast ocean-facing wall of tempered, hurricane-proof glass that allows sun and sky to pour into the space. Throughout the rest of the interior are custom windows that become strong forms in their own right. Designed by Gurney, they seem like small self-possessed canvases. The muntins that divide the pane of lites are referential, says Gurney, and meant to echo the traditional historic windows found in nearby homes. “Like the gables… these are a nod to the neighborhood…. The idea was to try to blend in some things that were referential and then weave our modern elements into the design,” says Gurney.
The muntins appear in practical yet atypical locations. For example, some are placed close to the edges of the walls rather than centered. Others are horizontal rectangles that run the length of a wall. In one of the bathrooms in the southwest corner of the home, forms appear within forms. Shaped like a rectangle, wall panels made of Kalwall, a translucent material, afford privacy while allowing filtered daylight to come in. Black muntins form a grid. Inside, a horizontal, narrow rectangular window set at eye level lets in air and light. From the exterior at twilight, when the wall is backlit, it looks like a solid black band.
The home’s grids, geometrical forms, color, and diagonal angles recall the asymmetrical balance and tranquility of a Piet Mondrian painting. “There’s a lot of Mondrian throughout my work,” says Gurney, whose influences are many and include De Stijl, the modern art movement from the early 1920s that favors the idea of form following function.
However, Gurney’s signature is distinct. There is harmony as well as an understated wit—vernacular beach house forms are deftly alluded to and abstracted. In fact, you could say that shapeshifting is achieved. At night, when viewed from the tide line, the home’s salt-box-like silhouette almost appears traditional, its oval cut-out, twin elongated gables, and asymmetry veiled by darkness. Yet, as the day dawns, forms cohere and resolve. This, too, seems to be part of the program. There are forms that transform in an architecture that is both complex and distilled. There is a linguistic dexterity at work. The architecture manages to speak two different languages: traditional and modern. They become, in this spacious home, one singular voice.
ARCHITECT: Robert M. Gurney, FAIA; Project Architect, Claire Andreas, Robert Gurney Architect, Washington, DC.
INTERIOR DESIGNER: Jodi Macklin, Jodi Macklin Interior Design, Washington, DC.
Breakfast and Dining Chairs – Suite NY
Breakfast Table – Design Within Reach
Custom Dining Table – Blowing Rock Woodworks
Family and Dining Room Rugs – Galleria Carpets & Rugs, DC
Family Room Furniture – Anees Upholstery; Lawson Fenning; A Rudin
© Annapolis Home Magazine
Vol. 15, No. 2 2024