Sandbox Nestled by Cape Cod Sand Dunes
OPAL Architecture has nestled a modest home known as Sandbox into Cape Cod’s sand dunes, lined with brightly toned bedrooms, a deck and a neat living room. A “typical gable form” was rotated and extended to provide a series of spaces which are “less private”, such as a garage, located in the middle of the L-shaped home. As the spaces inside become more intimate, rooms were organised with larger and smaller windows set in darkened frames.
Sandbox is nestled into the sand dunes of lower Cape Cod, on an undeveloped lot. Surrounded by single family residences, an important project goal for this family of two was maintaining a compact footprint and preserving the maximum amount of open space in the landscape.
With a natural restriction caused by the site’s topography, the home had to be located to the north of the site near the road. The design response leans into a single gabled volume, extruded to create a series of less-private programmatic spaces like entry and garage closer to the road. Complementing this tall, traditional volume is the living space, a low, L-shaped bar which frames an open, public court.
The living room extends to the outside with an articulated exterior deck as a threshold to the rest of the site. The minimalist design reinforces the Passive House standard design approach, including large, triple-pane European windows and a super insulated wall, roof, and slab-on-grade assembly.
The mechanical design utilizes high performance energy recovery ventilation equipment, custom-integrated with the variable refrigerant flow heat pump system, delivered strategically and discreetly throughout. The house reaches an EUI of 5.52 kBTU/SF/year, representing a 89% reduction from the baseline national average for a single family home. The design seeks to reduce its resource use through thoughtful and minimal finishes, while the limited footprint works to minimize stormwater impact and disturbance.
Spatially, the house is organized with a simple, ninety-degree rotation of a single story living room bar. The hinge-point of the bar houses the kitchen on the first floor, open to the living and dining areas and walk-out deck.
On the second floor, the primary bedroom replicates the programmatic adjacency of the first floor with a large, sliding glass access point to the flat roof over the dining area. The second floor also houses a second and third bedroom and nestled bathrooms, for both the primary residents and guests. At the end of the interior circulation is a glance back to the street from the second guest bedroom, situated over a hidden garage with access built into the wood siding at the ground floor.
The exterior finishes are deliberately spare, with dark fiber cement clapboard offset with a stained cedar liner to demarcate entry points. These colors are kept consistent in the trim, window frames, and roofing. The interior finishes abandon the dark exterior tones for white walls and warm wood tones throughout the floors, architectural millwork, and even the custom stair divider.
Small, but bold, accents occur throughout, with one notable occurrence in the conglomerate tile in the primary bathroom. These deliberate choices reflect the overall design intent seen throughout, where the design conserves energy and resources through a compact, but beautiful design, with highlights of texture and contrast. The close collaboration throughout between the architect, home owner, and builder, all with a common goal, allowed for a successful resolution.
Photography courtesy of OPAL Architecture
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