Washington Family Compound

A 6,600-square-foot multigenerational family compound in Osterville, Massachusetts, completed in 2023. The brief was a house that could host seven bedrooms' worth of extended family without losing the feeling of a single home.

The clients are a large extended family centered on a patriarch and matriarch, with adult children and grandchildren cycling through across the seasons. The patriarch uses a wheelchair, which set the terms of the plan from the start: the primary suite sits on the first floor with full accessibility, and the principal living, dining, and kitchen spaces all run on one level around it. Family suites for the adult children and their kids stack above on the second floor and above the carriage house, giving each branch of the family its own zone without isolating anyone from the main house.

"Our design intent was to create multiple opportunities throughout for intimate gatherings while keeping the swimming pool at its heart - yet visible throughout the project." - Jim Golden, AIA

The plan is organized around that idea. The kitchen and great room open directly to a screened porch and a bluestone pool deck, with the pool itself visible from most of the principal rooms. A pergola-covered dining area off the pool cabana handles evening meals outside. The first-floor primary suite is pulled away from the public spaces for privacy; the six additional bedrooms absorb extended family and guests across the upper floors.

The site planning was as much of the project as the building. A dead-end road at the rear of the lot gave us a discreet service approach, which let us position the carriage house and guest parking at the back of the property rather than the front. The result is a main residence that arrives cleanly through its portico - no cars on the lawn, no driveway dominating the approach.

The facade carries a formality gradient. The front elevation is white clapboard under a gracious Cape Cod portico - the public face of the house, intentionally more composed. As the building turns the corner and works toward the rear, the cladding shifts to traditional cedar shingles with white trim and colored shutters, settling into something more relaxed by the time it meets the pool and the family side of the property.