Omaha House

Project Description/Brief:  To design a family beach weekender, as a retreat and a place for extended family and friends to gather. To use horizontal cedar applied as a rain screen to the building envelope and to incorporate robust materials that will weather naturally with time. Design Features and Creative Solutions: The house is conceived as four discreet boxes linked together by a living ‘platform’ – reinforcing the notion that this is a place for sharing and strengthening common bonds. When the living room’s large doors are opened it’s dimensions expand seamlessly out onto morning and afternoon decks which are configured as external ‘rooms’, walled in to offer protection from the exposed position of the site. The house sits on top of a cantilevered concrete slab which will allow native coastal grasses to grow right up to and under the building’s edge, tying the structure into the landscape. An heroic effort was required in order to clad the house in its horizontal cedar rain screen – narrow cedar strips have been painstakingly fixed to the vertical battens behind them. So it is fitting that these fixings are expressed as a feature in the façade - the stainless steel fixings will remain bright as the cladding weathers, and will testify to quality workmanship for years to come.   Designer’s Name: David Maurice, LTD Architectural Project Cost: $550,000