TURNABOUT

A 1990S COLONIAL STYLE HOME IS NOW A QUIET BACKDROP FOR A BUSTLING CAPE COD WATERFRONT ESTATE.

- MICHAEL WELTON

A husband and wife’s quest for a more livable outdoor space and a place to store water sports equipment on their Cape Cod estate snowballed quickly into a full-blown redesign of their seven-and-a-half-acre site.

And the mid-1990s Colonial spec house that once dominated their North Bay locale?

It is now a muted backdrop for where the action is: a yoga studio atop the sunken storage space, a new swimming pool with expansive pool house, and a nautilus-shaped outdoor shower.

It all evolved from a preliminary series of site plans developed by landscape architect Dave Hawk, owner of the Sagamore, Massachusetts, firm that bears his name. Once his initial drawings were complete, Doreve Nicholaeff of Nicholaeff Architecture + Design in Osterville joined Hawk and the clients to collaborate further on the master plan. Nicholaeff would design the proposed yoga studio and the pool house inspired by its design, while Hawk designed the outdoor shower. “Doreve was instrumental in bringing

good ideas to the table,” Hawk says. “I knew she was a great talent and would be good with this client.”

Their first decision was whether to match the look of the Colonial-style home, or set off in another direction altogether. The clients opted for something more forward-looking, something that created its own vocabulary among all the diverse elements in the master plan.

“They gave us creative license,” Nicholaeff says of her minimalist, Japanese design aesthetic. “They said, ‘Go for it!’”