A waterfront site with an unusual program — a primary residence, a guest house, and a working boathouse — asked to be built as if it had always been there.
The owners came to Gardiner & Gardiner with three constraints: respect the shoreline, build for the next hundred years, and keep the household running through every phase. No surprises, no shortcuts, no value engineering past the point of integrity.
Twenty-six months later, the residence stands as a quiet companion to the bay. Stone laid by hand. Timber sourced within the region. A heating envelope rated for a future that doesn't yet exist. The boathouse moves with the tides.
It is, in the truest sense of the practice, a building meant to outlast the people who built it.
Gardiner & Gardiner did not build us a house. They built us the place we had been describing to architects for nine years — and finished six weeks early.— Owner, Bay Manor · Eastern Shore, MD