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Alabama’s Turquoise Place

A Crown Jewel: The Turquoise Place

Turquoise Place resort is an architectural delight on Alabama’s Gulf Coast. By Regina Cole

Visitors to Alabama’s Gulf Coast head straight for Route 182 to drive along the chain of slender barrier islands that form the sheltering arms of Mobile Bay. Azure waters lap the sugar-white sands of endless beaches, while bayous, coves, lakes, and lagoons border the north side of the two-lane highway. Resorts, beachside cottages, shrimp shacks, and bathing suit emporiums abound in the time-honored traditions of sun- and sand-kissed communities everywhere. Rubberneckers come to a screeching halt when they approach a pair of 23- and 30-story turquoise glass towers—aptly named Turquoise Place—rising in undulating curves.

“People often stop in to inquire about the building and ask for a tour,” says Eva Faircloth of Spectrum Resorts, the company that operates this and several other area resorts. “Most neighboring complexes are boxy and angular, but…Turquoise Place flows, mimicking the waves in the Gulf of Mexico.”

“The developers wanted to call it Turquoise Place to pay homage to the beautiful colors of the water,” says Forrest Daniell, principal architect of the eponymous Daphne, Alabama-based-firm responsible for the striking design. “Turquoise is a notoriously difficult color to work with; we found guidance in a nautilus shell.”

Daniell describes how this beautiful seashell combines the assertive color with shades of beige, dark red, and silver. “During the day, the two towers are white concrete and turquoise glass,” Daniell continues. “Nighttime lighting reveals red and beige patterns, creating an organic, flowing presence.”

Highrises close to a road usually make for an unpleasant tunnel effect; Daniell mitigated that with three-story parking garages that softly curve like the main buildings. “Parking garages are not usually pleasant spaces, so we designed these in the shape of a doughnut, with a four-story waterfall in the center,” he explains. “[They are] not rectilinear; they have light and the sound of water.”

The curves of the two buildings promote stellar views. The water that makes the parking garages so appealing repeats in three outdoor pools, two indoor pools, a lazy river, and large hot tubs on each balcony. Swimming pools incorporate underwater speakers, and one features a Tiki bar. Furnishings in all units include monogrammed sinks, Wolf gas ranges, Sub-Zero refrigerators, 55-inch flat-screen TVs, fireplaces, and fully equipped outdoor kitchens.

Turquoise Place opened to an economic slump in 2009, but a resident describes how it lifted local spirits. “This is the crown jewel of Orange Beach.”

A Martha’s Vineyard That is True to Tradition

One family’s Martha’s Vineyard vacation home manages to honor the island’s traditions while standing apart from the crowd. 

“This is so not your typical Martha’s Vineyard house,” says interior designer Robin Pelissier of the 14,000-square-foot island home. Her company, Robin’s Nest, creates extraordinary interiors, and this home’s architect and its owner agree that this home is just that. What most sets apart the contemporary Shingle-style house designed by Charles Rolando, principal architect at Domus, is its exuberance.

The Vineyard look features gray shingles with white trim, but this family summer home displays a penchant for color, mixed materials, and a non-linear approach. A wide, curvaceous stone entry encompasses vast windows, a great oak door, arched lights reminiscent of medieval castles, and a verandah. That entry is set into the L of the house marked with dormers and Palladian windows.

“I love curves,” says Rolando. “The homeowners love stone. Their dream also included soaring spaces, walls of windows, and coastal views.” To maximize those requirements, the most challenging aspect of the architect’s work was the house’s situation on its small, somewhat challenging lot.

“Between the wetlands and the flood plain, there was little room to maneuver,” Rolando says. “I tell my clients that I will drive them nuts with site analysis; I’m sure I did in this case. We reoriented the house and built closer to the height restriction and setbacks, resulting in a design where every room, except for the home theater, has a water view.”

The exterior curves repeat in a great circular staircase that sweeps up all three floors, connecting the eight bedrooms, 13 baths, theater, wine cellar, gentleman’s club room, and gym, which includes a hidden sauna. A fieldstone fireplace and chimney dominate the soaring two-story living room. While its front façade displays a modest one-and-a-half stories, the house’s rear elevation, all-glass walls, reveals its size.

“The interior features a lot of wood, iron, and stone,” says Pelissier. “Rich, saturated colors in fabrics and furnishings balance that masculine spirit. The homeowner loves color.” Pelissier points to the purple leather headboard in the master bedroom as an example. “[She] has great jewelry; we used that aesthetic for the interior design.”

Pelissier calls the lighting fixtures and hardware “the jewelry of the house, giving it sparkle and completing the décor the way a…necklace adds the finishing touch to a great outfit.”

But the kitchen is the heart of the home. “With four children, it’s where everything happens, so it was located in the center, with rooms radiating outward,” says Rolando.

Andrew Spindler of Gloucester

 

Andrew Spindler

Inside antiques dealer Andrew Spindler’s supremely stylish—and dichotomous—home in Gloucester, Massachusetts

New England antiques dealer Andrew Spindler points to the floor in the entryway of his coastal home in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Ceramic tiles glow softly in dusty red, blue, and ochre. They flow into the living room, where they converge with massive granite fireplace stones, a Jonas Lie frieze depicting Viking ships, numerous sculptures, books, and paintings, and a superb collection of American and European Arts and Crafts furniture.

“These are Mercer Tiles,” Spindler says. “They were made by Henry Mercer in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Today, we prize them as great examples of American Arts and Crafts.”

Spindler's elegant living room

But the floors aren’t the only notable design element of the 4,500-square-foot Shingle-style house, built in 1937. Other notable details include varied siding materials, from granite on the first floor to scalloped shingles on the second. The original metal windows represent Modernism’s embrace of clean lines and new materials. When Spindler bought the house in 1992, however, the windows had deteriorated, so he replaced them with new wood ones. He points to torpedo-shaped door hinges as another Modernist touch.

“The house design is wonderful in the way it connects to the site,” Spindler says. “With wood, stone, and beautiful windows, it makes the view important, while seeming to blend into the surroundings. It’s really like nowhere else.”

As for décor, elegant and curvaceous Federal-era furniture, Italian iron lighting, a 1968 Danish Harp chair, and a massive 19th-century mahogany bed could not be more different from each other, but each looks perfectly at home in an environment that honors them without taking them too seriously.

The house may be historic, but that didn’t keep Spindler from applying intense azure blue or kelly green to its walls. Stainless steel kitchen counters spell sleek function, while the room’s walls are treated to a deep aubergine. In this house, historicism does not fight contemporary tastes.

A Cape Cod Home is a Stunning Combination of Function and Form

Doreve Nicholaeff, the Johannesburg-born architect known for marrying linear modernism to voluptuous curves, worked her magic with a 7,000-square-foot Cape Cod home and its guest house. On a prominent point at the entrance of a sheltered bay on Nantucket Sound, the house is expansive and supremely functional. Upon first glance, however, it is all about dramatic good looks, inside and out.

The Cape house exterior is accompanied by an infinity pool

 

“We wanted to make the most of the incredible views,” says Nicholaeff. “From every room, you look out at beauty, whether it is the Bay or the Sound. The prime location, however, made it important for us to consider how the house would look to boats coming into the harbor.”

Returning sailors see symmetrical shingled wings converging on a curved façade largely composed of windows; at night, the house shines across the water like a lighthouse.
As gracefully integrated a part of the landscape as it now appears, this home was not easy to build.

“As it’s in a flood plain, no mechanical systems could be located where they usually are: in the basement,” Nicholaeff says. “Instead, they’re invisible, but accessible, in one part of the first floor. Below the ground-floor level we put breakaway panels that open for flood water if there’s a 100-year storm.”

The proximity of a notoriously stormy stretch of sea wasn’t the only building obstacle: Nicholaeff spent six months acquiring the variances and permissions that local boards and commissions require to grant building permits in such environmentally sensitive areas. Now, that’s a distant memory.

While the exterior nods to local building tradition with cedar shakes, traditional porch railings, and white trim, the interior is decidedly modern. The large kitchen is softened with pale flooring and cabinetry. Like every other space in the house, the kitchen orients toward the outdoors: Working at the granite-topped island is to gaze at a glorious view.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“My client wanted very clean lines, so we used no crown moldings,” Nicholaeff explains. “The rooms are all painted the same warm white, with mahogany doors and windows. ”

The open layout flows around a circular central staircase that recalls a chambered nautilus or Federal architecture. While beautiful, it also knits together far-flung rooms with curves of varying arcs along their water sides. The central spiral appears to hold the house’s curvaceous exterior close and safe.

“While the house has traditional and modern elements,” says Nicholaeff, “what makes it work is the rigorous geometry that responds to the contours of the land.”

Dennis Duffy Brings Boston Design to Maine

A Manhattan business duo teams up with a Boston design star to create their dream summer cottage on the Maine coast.

A notable recent project by Boston design star Dennis Duffy is a Maine vacation house that’s stylish and rich with personality, yet sleek and uncluttered at the same time.

“The owners worked with designers in their New York condo and Connecticut country house, but here, they wanted someone from New England who understands the region’s history and culture,” Duffy says. “They have a modern aesthetic, which I am known for.”

The Duffy Design Group is a four-time winner of “Best of Boston for Interior Design” and the 2009 IIDA New England winner. The owners of the “cottage” are high-powered and high-profile New York businessmen. Rigorous research and lengthy interviews connected Boston and New York.

“Before I began, they showed me their Manhattan condo so I could see their taste…,” Duffy explains, adding, “…once we decided to work together, they gave me carte blanche—as long as nothing competed with the view.”

The area has attracted affluent summer visitors for over 150 years. Distinguished by spectacular natural beauty and a down-to-earth culture, coastal Maine is accessible, but light years from Manhattan. From their first foray into the Pine Tree State, this couple felt at home. They rented a succession of summer places until they found a four-bedroom Shingle-style house built in 1901, poised on the rocky shore and featuring spectacular views of Boon Island, the Cape Neddick Lighthouse, Eastern Point, and the open ocean.

Within the historic exterior, Duffy opened and connected rooms on the first floor and designed luxurious new bathrooms, including a stunning entryway powder room. The entryway, formerly a series of cramped rooms, now opens into a light-filled living space dominated by a sculpture of a Duffy-designed staircase. Panels of seeded glass float upward within a teak frame. Stainless-steel uprights make it modern; tension cable nods to the nautical setting.

Cabinetmaker Mike Fernald of nearby Cape Neddick executed the mouldings, built-ins, vanities, cabinets, and the kitchen, designed to look original to the 1901 house. Duffy took his cues from the adjacent butler’s pantry, which remained intact at the homeowners’ insistence. He created space within the historic footprint when a warren of unused attic rooms and closets became a spacious rec-and-media room.

Personality abounds: a French cast iron industrial scale is base to a console table and, on the top floor, old wooden tennis racquets circle a wall like a great mandala.

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