SHIFTING SANDS

Architectural precision and unbridled imagination join forces in this globally inspired Florida beach home.

- BY JANICE RANDALL ROHLF | PHOTOS BY WILLIAM ABRANOWICZ

AN INTERVIEW with architect Jeffrey Dungan is not pedagogical, it's fun. One minute he's quoting Mark Twain and the next he's rhapsodizing about Le Corbusier's friend, 20th-century industrialist/architect Jean Prouvé. When you knit together these references along with his nods to Rodin, it all adds up to how and why his white-plaster confection, The Sandcastle, came to be. It's “sculpture that you live in,” says Dungan.

The style of this 5,000-square-foot, four-level Alys Beach, Florida, house is as capricious as Dungan's manner of describing it. In the upscale community between Destin and Panama City, the signature white-stucco houses have been referred to as evoking the essence of Italian or Grecian beach towns. With their ubiquitous hipped roofs, they also have a distinct Bermudian aspect to them. “I borrow inspiration from a lot of different places,” says Dungan, who was even influenced by a design originating in the Middle Ages for glass rondels, which punctuate the home's 10-foot-tall wooden front door. “I never allow myself before I start a project to have any predetermined ideas, because I think it totally limits what could happen.”