continued

A breakfast nook overlooks the front drive to the house, which welcomes one to this special hide-away. Woodwork is minimal and made up almost entirely of standard off-the-shelf pieces.

The living room has a shallow peaked ceiling, highlighted by cove lights, to give it a center and to set it off from the adjacent dining space to which it is completely open. Doors open to garden and lake at both ends of the symmetrical shape defined by this ceiling.

Along with the dining room, it offers a restful, inviting setting to entertain friends and family, or simply to enjoy the quiet solitude of the lake setting.

Architecture of the Endless Summer

The rugged beauty of Cape Cod flexes throughout this "...bared and bended arm of Massachusetts," as Henry David Thoreau described it, "...boxing with northeast storms..." From Buzzard's Bay to the very tip of Provincetown, one finds beaches and waving sea grass, ponds and pines, harbors and bogs. Tiny shacks line old country roads, the smell of the ocean filters across sandy barriers.

Nature holds sway. Anything that is built here must bend to the color, texture, and timelessness of nature. The soft grays, greens, blues, and ochers that paint Cape Cod are the colors of its finest architecture — the structures that appear to rise from the salt, the sand, and the sea, to take their place for just a little while in the greater scheme of time on Cape Cod.

"The Cape," as it is known to New Englanders, has a natural beauty and sense of timeless architecture that cannot be expunged — no matter how many clam shacks and soft-serve stands litter the landscape. For most it is a destination — the cottage by the sea that many dream about through cold, dark winters. The Bourne and Sagamore bridges, which connect the Cape to the rest of America, spirit vacationers over Cape Cod Canal, delivering them to a land of endless summers.

It must always be summer on Cape Cod. My own recollections of summers at the Cape surface as I venture to visit the Polhemus Savery DaSilva office in the town of Chatham (the Cape's thrusting elbow). The office is chockfull of models and rolls of drawings, each one capturing a vision of the perfect summer getaway.

There is magic in the cardboard and the blueprints, enough to make clients dream beyond the confines of mere vacation houses. Each house is a wish — a place of tranquility by the sea, where memories are made with families and friends.

Peter Polhemus, the firm's president, and John DaSilva, the firm's lead design partner, walk me through projects as we view each model, telling of the client's hopes and inspirations. As they talk, Polhemus and DaSilva seem more conjurors than architects — careful listeners who take their clients' views of themselves and how they wish to inhabit the Cape and create just the right setting for living out that particular version of the endless summer.

The firm's structure is a large part of its success of creating a unique sense of place on Cape Cod. Architect Peter Polhemus partnered with builder Leonard Savery in 1996 to create a design-build firm that could deliver well-crafted homes. DaSilva joined them two years later, bringing a refined sense of design to the partnership.

The design-build arrangement allows the firm to marry art with craft — a quality that is absent in many contemporary homes. It harkens back to the age of grand old houses by the sea — the heyday of the Shingle Style and the creation of gracious family retreats passed down through generations. It is this architectural history, and the memories associated with it, that Polhemus Savery DaSilva connects with and carries forward through its work.

These small details are what make architecture and construction, particularly the work of PSD, truly memorable. They are like the bits of sea glass that we collect along the water's edge, the pieces of driftwood that recall for us a thousand shimmering days, spent with several generations of our family gathered nearby, amid a cooling breeze blowing sheer white curtains into a bedroom.

Outside an open window there are kids playing on the beach, dragging behind them pails filled with shells that will be carefully washed and placed on the shelves that line the walls of our "great good summer place."

Discuss this article in the Architecture Forum...

Michael J. Crosbie is editor-in-chief of Faith & Form, the chair of the University of Hartford's Department of Architecture, and a contributing editor to ArchitectureWeek.   More by Michael J. Crosbie

This article is excerpted from Architecture of the Cape Cod Summer: The Work of Polhemus Savery DaSilva by Michael J. Crosbie, copyright © 2009, Images Publishing Group, with permission of Polhemus Savery DaSilva Architects Builders.

SUBSCRIPTION SAMPLE Both the living and dining rooms of the Crystal Lake House connect to a western garden. While access from the living room is direct, a shaded porch acts as a buffer for the dining room. Photo: Brian Vanden Brink/ Courtesy Polhemus Savery DaSilva Architects Extra Large Image SUBSCRIPTION SAMPLE The dining room of Crystal Lake House. Photo: Brian Vanden Brink/ Courtesy Polhemus Savery DaSilva Architects Extra Large Image Crystal Lake House site plan drawing. Image: Polhemus Savery DaSilva Architects Builders Extra Large Image At the western end of the galley kitchen, a breakfast nook overlooks the front garden of the Crystal Lake House. Photo: Brian Vanden Brink/ Courtesy Polhemus Savery DaSilva Architects Extra Large Image SUBSCRIPTION SAMPLE Crystal Lake House ground-floor and upper-floor plan drawings. Image: Polhemus Savery DaSilva Architects Builders Extra Large Image The kitchen of the Crystal Lake House overlooks an east-facing screened porch. A narrow opening between floors connects the upstairs hallway with the kitchen. Photo: Patrick Wiseman/ Courtesy Polhemus Savery DaSilva Architects Builders Extra Large Image A narrow deck spans the entire rear facade of the Crystal Lake House. Photo: Patrick Wiseman/ Courtesy Polhemus Savery DaSilva Architects Builders Extra Large Image Architecture of the Cape Cod Summer by Michael J. Crosbie. Image: Images Publishing Group Extra Large Image   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.