Unique, Stylish, Contemporary

The Sodergren residence on St Anne’s Road in Southampton may have been purpose built for owners who want to age-in-place but it has been done so without cutting any style corners in the process. In fact, the complete opposite.

With its flat roof, interesting shapes and angles, concrete floors, cement wash, monochrome palate, open plan living space and floor-to-ceiling hurricane grade windows, the house is both unique and striking in its modern style.

“The owners wanted something that was very contemporary,” said Architect Geoff Parker. “They’d lived in a very traditional house all their life. They were retiring and just wanted something fresh and they were adamant that they didn’t want a Bermuda cottage.”

One concession to tradition is the roof parapet features, which, continued Parker are “deliberate to soften it.”

The result is a 2,300 sq. ft. two-bedroom, two-bathroom main house with a 1,500 sq. ft. two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment underneath. There are also stables for up to three horses being built on the 0.95-acre property. Construction began in December 2021.

The main house is all on one level, including zero thresholds, which is helpful for seniors, but provided a particular challenge for the verandah, which has a 27-foot-wide opening from the living area and, although deep, still needed to have a drainage system to guarantee no rain could get inside:

“An amazing amount of work went into getting the structure of these just right,” explained Lead Designer, Kris Hedges, who is also project managing the construction. Because the verandah is cantilevered, rebar extends all the way back.

“We had to create a trough for these to sit in,” he continued, “and so all the rebar drops down and goes around.”

The reason for the cantilevering is the complicated topography of the site, which is a steep slope with south shore exposure. While not ideal for a single-floor home, clever design and engineering has resulted in a large, open, airy house with breath taking south shore views from almost every indoor and outdoor living area.

The indoor hub of the home is a large, open plan kitchen, dining and living area, which leads out onto a deep covered verandah with a swimming pool and hot tub, again, designed specifically with the age of the owners in mind.

“It’s a single depth pool. There’s a handrail and there’s also a bench on the side,” said Hedges, who added that there will be “a waterfall edge on the two sides and then the spa will also have a flow into the pool.”

There is an alternative outdoor courtyard-style seating area around the eastern side of the house, which includes a gas fireplace, the wall for which conveniently provides extra privacy for the pool.

There is even a courtyard ‘inside’ the house, in which there will be more seating options. It also adds to the natural light and ventilation throughout the home, which was a design priority from the outset:

“They wanted to naturally ventilate the house,” explains Hedges. “There are airconditioning units, but it’s very minimal in a house of this scale. We’d normally have a ducted system. Here, they’ve just gone with two high-walls. They don’t even have AC in the main living space. They’re in an exposed location where they should be able to naturally ventilate.”

All the doors and windows have been designed with natural light and air in mind, including the floor to ceiling sliding doors linking the outside verandah to the indoor living space, and large, tilted “European-style” windows throughout the rooms. There is also a wide, high skylight above the shower in the primary bathroom.

In addition to the exposed concrete, and monochrome tiling are what Hedges describes as “wooden notes” throughout. Above the main entrance is a wooden pergola, which will be stained black. There is another wooden pergola by the outdoor fireplace, bench seating will have wood incorporated, there will be internal doors and shelving in walnut, and trellis wood on the entry wall and in the courtyard, which will house vines to soften the walls.

Downstairs, with it’s own separate entry and parking area is an apartment, which originally, wasn’t supposed to be there:

“The first iteration was up on piers with grass underneath, but because the topography is so steep and the owners wanted it at this height so they could get the view, it was too much ground underneath to do that,” explained Parker.

So, in went the apartment, which has so much storage space behind the living areas, under the main house, that the owner is even considering hydroponic growing.

While hydroponics is a more unusual home-based environmental pursuit, other more common environmentallyfriendly, energy efficient systems have been incorporated, including solar panels, battery storage, double glazing, LED lighting, and even an electric vehicle charging station in the car port.

Key Contractors

• BAC

• BAE

• Bermuda Supply

• Efficiency Limited

• Geoff Parker Architect

• Pembroke Tile & Stone

• Total Project Services Ltd

Situated atop one of the highest points of Riddell’s Bay, it’s hard to see how Havenfield ever got built. The views across the former golf course to the Great Sound are showstopping, making it difficult to peel your eyes away. To that end, Jacob Hocking of CTX Design Group took a ‘why use walls when glass will do’ approach, taking full advantage of all the outside beauty this site has to offer.

“Everything was to maximise the views,” says Will Irvine of Lighthouse Construction, who has been project managing the design and building of Havenfield since the outset. When you walk into the house, you immediately see through to the view. When you’re in the large, open plan kitchen, dining and living area, a wide opening onto the verandah draws you out to the view. Even the stairwell will have a “commercial-style wall of glass” so you can appreciate the view as you go up and down the stairs.

Designed for a family of four, with two children, the main, 4,000 sq. ft. house has three bedrooms, two full bathrooms and one powder room. An apartment on the side has one bedroom, one bathroom and a kitchenette.

The downstairs design very much promotes indoor-outdoor family living. A large office, which doubles up as a craft room, has been built off the family room, which can be opened out onto the deck.

The opening between the covered verandah and main living and kitchen area will have a 32-foot-wide, 6 panelled slider which can be completely opened up to the outdoor living spaces and swimming pool.

“The pool is a really fun story,” continues Irvine. “Originally, it was shorter and shallower, but when the owner got here, he started looking at the roof and said: ‘Can we make the pool bigger?’” His reason for asking was so he could jump off it into the pool, and the answer was ‘yes’.

“We measured it out so he can do a back flip off the edge of the roof and he’s going to put grip tape on the corner of