A home she
designed for a
seven-acre site in
Chapoquoit meets
the newer floodplain
regulations by
sitting up on ninety
piles forty feet into
the ground.
Many of Neubauer’s designs embrace the modern
aesthetic she fell in love with as a teenager: clean, simple lines;
abstracted elements; creative surprises; close connections
between architecture and landscape; and generous outdoor
social spaces.
One outstanding example of this is a home she designed
for a seven-acre site in Chapoquoit. The property is largely in
conservation and originally had a home sitting right on a dune in
a high velocity zone. Her clients had a choice: Accept the house
as it was or tear it down and build to meet the newer floodplain
regulations. They chose the latter, and the engineering involved
to make it permittable included driving ninety piles forty feet
into the ground and connecting them through a foundational
network with steel columns coming up to the house.
“It will be the only house standing in West Falmouth in a
hundred years,” Neubauer remarks.
She simplified the home’s original footprint into a
rectangle and designed an elegant, strong contemporary
home to sit on that footprint. Generous windows offer
360-degree views of Cape Cod Bay, a stunning marsh, and
West Falmouth Harbor, giving the impression that the home
is an extension of the landscape. “Most of the new homes we
do that are teardowns from older cottages that don’t meet
existing codes are modern with lots of glass so the clients can
enjoy the magnificent sites,” she says.
With their energy efficiency and use of nontoxic and
sustainable materials, Neubauer’s designs are right at home in
the twenty-first century, though their modern roots go back
further on Cape Cod than many realize. Beginning in the 1930s,
several innovators of modern architecture moved to the Outer
Cape, building creative enclaves for themselves and their friends.
Due to the efforts of the Cape Cod Modern House Trust, a wider
AT HOME ON CAPE COD 44 • SPRING/SUMMER 2020
PHOTOS: MEREDITH HUNNIBELL