- Neighborhood kids would ride their bikes to the top
of the hill here and then go shooting down this angle.
To be able to put a deck here,
provided a little bit of sanity check for us.
- So what are we actually looking at?
This is what we call the Dune House,
an underground home built from concrete,
very unique in its design and architecture.
- We are in Atlantic Beach, Florida, right on the ocean.
It's a surfing community.
- This was built in 1975.
I think it was 1968, Hurricane Dora hit here.
Because the dune was so high here,
it allowed to be able to build two stories into a dune.
- The architect is William Morgan, he's very well known
and he lived next door.
- Instead of pushing the dune aside and building
just another box on it, he decided to incorporate
a living structure into the actual environment.
We had an opportunity to acquire it seven years ago now.
- The dune houses are actually two separate homes
that are mirror images of each other.
It's a loft style on both sides.
So there's an upstairs and a downstairs
and a sweeping staircase.
I'm Jennie Malloy.
- And I'm Carl Drew.
And we wanna welcome you to our unique
and beautiful Sand Dune Home on the ocean.
[snappy music]
All right, we are at the entrance to the Dune House.
- Mr. Morgan designed this in his words as an experiment.
He based it on the Fibonacci principle or the golden spiral.
- It was very much built around perfect proportions
to really create an aesthetic and a balance
that can be found in nature.
- So come on in and we'll show you the bedroom area
and the upstairs of the loft.
This is the upstairs space.
- The unique thing here is this is the grass roof
over top of us.
Even though it's the bedroom,
it's really integrated into the entire space.
The light from the ocean, it comes in.
The airflow and everything is enhanced
by the openness of the orchestra piece.
In addition to having the open airflow created by this wall,
it also defines a unique bathroom area.
[uptempo music]
- So this is the living space of the Dune House.
- This actually started out as a sunken living room,
but because it actually was lower,
you didn't get the advantage of the views
towards the ocean that we have on this floor.
So we actually have raised this floor level up
and made it into a more traditional living room area.
- You will notice that everything is still rounded.
The ceilings are and even this sort of a port hole,
if you will.
So before we leave this space,
I'd like to show you something that was a card
from the original owners that they gave to us
and it shows the Dune House and what it looked like
in the '70s, '80s, '90s I understand.
There was no deck space at the time
and there was no way to sit and sip and have coffee
with a full view of the ocean.
And so Carl came up with the idea to have two deck spaces
and a set of stairs so that our guests or we
could easily go from the outside front of the home
to the back of the home and the beach area,
and take advantage of beautiful deck space as well.
- All right, so now we go into the kitchen area,
which is actually surprisingly big
for this amount of space.
- So before, this was a white kitchen.
It was a white formica laminate kitchen
and it just had basic wood shelving.
So we updated it with the kitchen cabinets
as well as granite counter tops
and we did an open shelving design.
- When we selected the appliances, it was very much
about the tolerances that we needed for this space.
So you can see how close the door had to come to the handles
in order to be functional.
- We weren't afraid of small spaces
because we've been on so many sailboats previously.
So to us, this felt almost natural
and feels a little bit like a sailboat.
- One of the big additions is
we actually added a powder room down here,
which provided our guests a lot more convenience
rather than have to go up the master suite.
It's surprisingly more space than you think because
of the rounded nature of the exterior walls.
So there's depth and height provided
by the nature of that design.
The really unique opportunity here was the fact
that we're living in a dune on the ocean.
So let's take a look at what that's like from the outside.
- We came up with the master design plan
for a pretty little walkway, a fire pit.
It just all flows and beautifies the property.
- So it really has become almost a Garden of Eden
as you transition from the inside of the house
into the ocean, this is a little secret garden here.
[waves crashing]
- So one of the important things we wanted to do was
to add an outdoor space where you could really watch
and look at the ocean and enjoy it,
whether that's over coffee or a glass of wine.
Carl came up with this brilliant idea
of having a set of stairs, one for each side
of the Dune House as well as a deck, a separate deck
for each side of the Dune House,
which again plays on the mirror image of each other.
- Okay, now we wanna show you the deck, come on.
[snappy music]
- So here we are in the deck of the Dune House
and it's still got this private feel up here
because we have the grass roof of the Dune House
right behind us and it actually gives you privacy
from the street, so people riding their bikes or driving by
don't even know that you're here.
- So as you can see from the deck,
it affords these scenic views
that we didn't have access to before.
The sounds, the sights, the smell of the ocean,
it's all afforded by sitting up here in this space.
- The Dune House has been a very special place
for all of us and our children.
Even one of them wanted to study architecture
after spending time here in this space.
- It means a lot to the community and it meant a lot
to us, this journey of renovating
and putting our unique touches on this space.
We really enjoyed the fact that we're able to share this
and have you see a part of our space and our lives.
Thank you for coming.
[jazz music]