Over the course of more than a dozen years we worked with this Connecticut family as they considered coastal properties where they might build a home that would engage the water with views from every important room. During that process of exploration, we looked at multiple properties and tested ideas about the relationship between functions, the proportion of spaces, and the style of architecture. So, by the time the opportunity of this property came along, we all knew what the house should be — a traditional but spare exterior envelope of stucco with limestone details, largely symmetrical, with high ceilings and oversized doors and windows to provide sweeping water views.

On the approach to the house, a long drive bends through a mature landscape of old hardwoods, tall pines, and masses of yews, allowing only oblique and partial views of the house. Nearing the residence, the driveway straightens to align with the front door and boxwood-framed auto court, revealing a full view of the formal entry elevation. On the Sound side, the broad expanse of the façade is enlivened with a rhythm of projections and recesses that define outdoor gathering places — some shaded for shelter from summer sun, some embraced by the building’s walls to deflect prevailing winds in cooler months.

Because our clients are attracted to a classicism that is crisp and elegant, they challenged us to develop a language for the interior detail that would largely exclude the curved shapes that are a part of a traditional architecture vocabulary. The language of detail inside the house is restrained and slightly austere in the manner of John Russell Pope, whose refined use of molding profiles to draw in light and shadow is a regular inspiration for us. Complementing the tightly controlled approach to the interior architecture is a similarly understated material palette of blue, beige, grey, and warm whites that set a backdrop for the drama of the changing moods of water and sky.

Organized by a central east–west axis and north–south circulation spine, the plan has at its center a living room on the first floor and the primary bedroom suite on the second floor. The symmetry of the plan holds to the immediate east and west of the central core with equal-width wings that hold the family room and dining room on one side and the sunroom, media room, and guest bedroom suite on the other. From there, the massing of the house finds a casual repose by balancing forms of various visual weights. In contrast to the formality of the home’s composition, in daily use the home is full of life, with doors always left open, except in the coldest weather, so dogs and people are free to move in and out or sit anywhere the light and views are most appealing.