Life at Sea

Designer-artist Emmett Moore builds a waterfront Miami home to stand the test of time and tides

- HANNAH MARTIN

When Emmett Moore, a furniture designer and sculptor, began planning his Miami house in 2014, he had one parameter: The ground floor needed to fit a sailboat. It wasn't entirely aspirational. His then-girlfriend and now-wife, Sarah Newberry Moore, is a professional sailor. (She's currently training for the 2024 Olympics.) An 18-square-foot box with 11.5-foot ceilings-large enough to store a catamaran became the basic building unit of the home.

But the two-story concrete residence on the banks of the Seybold Canal keeps the sea top of mind in more ways than one. "In theory, you could launch a boat from our front driveway," says Moore, speaking to the inevitability of rising water levels. Working with the Miami-based firm Arquitectonica, Moore built the structure five feet off the ground and incorporated myriad strategies for coastal resiliency, among them catch basins, French drains, and an absorbent landscape of salt-tolerant plants. In dire conditions, the first floor (his studio) could even be relinquished to the tides, leaving the couple's top-level living quarters untouched. The place is also designed with passive cooling techniques, solar power, a rainwater collection system, and a garden that produces a bounty of fruits and vegetables. "The whole idea," he says, "was to consolidate our life into this one building."