DeForest Architects: John DeForest, Rosie Donovan, Geoff Briggs, Meredith Kelly

Owners Representative: Alison Kartiganer, Lumberjill

Interior Design: NB Design Group

Landscape Design: Allworth Design

Structural: Swenson Say Faget

Contractor: Krekow Jennings

Location: East Sound, Washington

5,200 sf square feet

4BR, 4.5BA

Photography: Tim Bies

A young couple asked DA to help create “a place to share with friends, a place for adventure and exploring, being a kid again, cooking together, experiencing nature and being part of something bigger.” The result is a long-term plan for “restoring the soul of the property” including designing this main house, renovating several existing cabins, and generally creating a more sustainable landscape and building infrastructure for future generations.

An old house on the property sat squarely in the middle of the lawn, blocking views from other cabins toward the water. The new house is located further back from the shoreline, which allows all the buildings to share the views and to ‘gather’ around the amphitheater-like open space. Large lift-slide doors encourage indoor-outdoor living. At the shoreline, a tall creosote bulkhead was removed, and the pocket beach was restored, creating habitat for salmon forage fish, and providing a place for people to reconnect to the sea.

One of the owners’ goals was to engage generations of visitors in the design process, so DA proposed a weekend-long series of workshops that helped get to the heart of the project with the involvement of friends and family.