Alligator Point House

Located on Alligator Point, a small beach community on St. James Island, along Florida’s Gulf of Mexico, this small coastal cabin is sited on a deep-water canal with views and direct access to Alligator Harbor. Intended as a vacation home, the 2-story house is composed of semi-private, “loft-like” spaces, open to each other from floor to floor allowing visual connections and encouraging interaction among family and friends.

A two-story screened porch faces north towards the canal and utilizes offset floor decks to reinforce floor-to-floor communication and allow a three-dimensional spatial variety. A south facing second story balcony with a stainless-steel cable railing system is visually suspended from the roof allowing a very open experience within the treetops of the numerous pines scattered throughout the site.

Operable windows and large sliding glass exterior pocket doors open the house to natural passive airflow and coastal ocean sounds and smells. Clerestory windows bring in natural light while views of the deep overhangs give a sense of layered enclosure and protection, inherent to many “old Florida” coastal homes. A simultaneous sense of shelter and extension.

Common and appropriate materials such as 5-V crimp galvanized metal roof panels as well as corrugated metal and tongue and groove vertical cedar siding are anticipated in efforts to control escalating material costs.