MODERN CAPE COD HOME

Micropiles in dry lake bed

Empty site before construction starts

Building a new home is always a large undertaking. Building a new home over water complicates things further. Yet that is what our client had in mind when they purchased their Lake Oswego property. They wanted a small jewel box of a home with a modern Cape Cod styling and an immediate connection to the lake. The property they found, wedged between two existing homes, stretched from the street down into the water. From the beginning we knew that the entire house would sit just above the lake.

The house was shaped by the needs of our client and the pressures of the site. The desire to face the lake, the proximity of the neighbors to either side, the narrowness of the lot, the manhole that sat on the property reducing the buildable area, all conspired to arrange rooms and dictate the shape of the home from the very beginning. Later, as the project developed, the added requirement for a boathouse further complicated the room arrangement. The resulting home, swathed in warm grey cedar shingles and white trims with its ridge parallel to the shoreline, holds true to the ideal of a classic Cape Cod house. The tall main floor provides volume to make the smaller spaces feel large and the height to allow for transom windows to occur throughout the main floor. Shed dormers take the place of a more traditional gabled dormer and help modernize the form while heavy trims provide elegance and classic styling to the home. A Dutch door creates a sense if playfulness that bridges between the sometimes academic feeling of modern

architecture and the strict forms of classic design.

Cupola from outside

Due to the confines of the site, the house ends up being long and narrow as it stretches from the shoreline out over the lake. That configuration, and the proximity of the neighbors, means that most of the windows are either faced towards the water or the shore with very few oriented to the sides of the property.  Because of this, we had concerns that the middle of the house might be dark. The solution was to situate a cupola above the stair well to bring daylight deep into the middle of the house. The windows in the cupola also allow for heat to escape easily helping keep the house comfortable during ever hotter summers.

At the other end of the property the owner wanted a two car garage with a breezeway down the middle. This filled the property from lot line to lot line, cutting off access to the site. To allow for large items to be brought in from the street, we placed an additional overhead door in the back wall of one of the garage bays. With both the front and rear overhead doors open, large items can come through the garage through the courtyard and into the house without the need of a crane or boat. 

Aside from the solutions to the challenges the site presented, the house has several other unique features. For the kitchen the client wanted a large pantry but the other programatic needs and site conditions made this impossible to achieve. Instead of a traditional pantry, we created a wall pantry in the kitchen. Projecting in to the room a scant 12”, the pantry looks like a shallow floor to ceiling cabinet but opening the door reveals a deep pantry with a coffee station and plenty of pullout drawers. The Dr. Who-esque trick was pulled off by pushing the pantry out the exterior wall into a small space at the side of the house that sat outside of setbacks and just off of the manhole and its required work space. 

Facing the water is a dock that nearly spans the width of the property. Clad in thermally treated white ash by Thermory, the dock provides inviting space for entertaining and for water and boating activities. The sides of the dock are flanked by custom planters made of Accoya, a modified wood product. The dock is accessed from the house via a large Nanawall bifold door which allows the living room to expand greatly when weather allows.