Photos by Steven Brooke and Barbara Banks
Feature: Out of the Blue
July 2, 2004
To start, his team of architects and landscape designers devised a
sequence of settings that slowly unfolds as you reach the front door. Prior to
the property’s second birth, the residence fronted a circular driveway typical
of the home’s early years. Previously, owners and guests rounded halfway around
the loop, exited their cars and entered the front door. Now, they park by the
stucco privacy wall painted gray-green—a color gleaned from the sea—and step up to a Zen-like garden
of white gravel, Cambodian clay pots, coconut palms and towering bamboo shoots anchored in black Mexican river rock. Shades of the megaliths of Stonehenge
abound, with the same air of mystery.
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Homeowners Hadassa and Harvey Morris commissioned abstract paintings from local
artists and added contemporary pots and the occasional antique. (Click images to enlarge)At the Morris home, all sense of time vanishes. Nothing in this entrance garden speaks of utility. Chairs are absent. The pots are empty. The scenery, minimal as it is, is intended for viewing, pondering and meditating—the way one approaches an art exhibit. The show plays into the night with uplights illuminating the bamboo, pots and a reflecting pool.
Sarasota landscape architect David W. Young drew his design
inspiration from the residence’s simple geometric forms. “We expressed this in
the layout of the gravel yard,” he says, “which is almost a perfect square
punctuated by a linear arrangement of coconut palms [aligned with the primary]
axis of the house.”
Turning from the garden, you step across a concrete
walkway to reach the transparent front door. The path, scored with a geometric
pattern, echoes that of the entry’s clear and opaque glass. A reflecting pool, fed with gently splashing water from
a low-rim concrete fountainhead designed by Young, ushers you inside.
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The wicker
chairs in the living room were reproduced from
furniture in the lobby of the
Peabody Hotel in Orlando. (Click image to enlarge)The
home’s interiors are a world apart from the secluded tranquillity of the
garden—a contrast that elevates the design drama. Window treatments are
nonexistent, allowing the indoor experience to be a celebration of sea, sand and
sun by way of a 15-foot-high wall of glass and a 23-foot-high glass atrium
ceiling above a seemingly floating staircase. Spaces between the treads of the
staircase—an ensemble of white steel and maple—are open, providing glimpses of
the ocean with every step. But the views do not stop at the top of the stairs:
They extend to the master bath’s vanity and the glass-enclosed shower.
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