plum island house by CO-G playfully rethinks typical new england design

CO-G introduces its playfully designed plum island house to a small beach community north of boston. the design team generates space with three curvilinear volumes, each an ambiguous hybrid of ‘object’ and ‘wall’ as they are experienced from floor to floor. the house is expressed with a familiar residential kit of parts and material palette, testing the architectural capacity of the cedar shingle and three widow’s peaks. while drawing from these building techniques typical of the boston area, the house is clearly dissimilar to the bostonian typology. this condition lends an uncanny sense of familiarity as the house looks to the volumetric properties of the shingle, wrapping and seamlessly blending both orthogonal and curved perimeters.

all images by CO-G

CO-G organizes its plum island house as a single continuous enclosure. while at the ground level, the house is conceived as a simple square volume, at the second, the surfaces transition vertically, wrapping inward toward the center. defining the programs of the project, these volumes arc outside of — and ultimately return back to — the constraints of the square. each is simultaneously straight and curved, rendered continuous and seamless by the shingle. in the design of the plum island house, the team at CO-G draws influence from the writings of theorist vincent scully, notably his 1955 book ‘the shingle style and the stick style’ in which the author suggests that the shingle allows for a new type of architectural form — one that is expressed volumetrically rather than as a series of assembled planes. bending around curved edges, the shingle introduces the capacity to wrap a taut surface around complex geometries.

CO-G emphasizes the multitude of landscape features in all directions over which the plum island house looks. these include the atlantic ocean to the east, the marsh to the west, and the dunes to the northeast. the tangential moments which negotiate curved surfaces allow for the insertion of large glazing which frame these views encircling the site. within the ground level interior, the curving walls read as intersecting objects, allowing a free-floating plan without direction. the wall thickness integrates storage and kitchen elements while the volumes themselves contain the two bathrooms, offering a fluid and open first floor. the volumes on the second floor hold the two sleeping suites, a sculptural interruption to an otherwise open roof deck. elevated on pilotis, the house is designed to avoid rising water levels in storms and maintain a delicate relationship with the natural dunescape.