Architect Jody Beck with her son Jonah Tisdale, 1, in front of the family beach house she designed on Anna Maria Island, Florida. The home is essentially a bunker on the beach: its structure and envelope are constructed entirely of poured-in-place concrete to resist hurricane force winds while enabling dramatic cantilevers and unobstructed views of the Gulf of Mexico. Photo courtesy of Traction Architecture.
The backstory on the house from architect Jody Beck, who runs Tampa-based Traction Architecture with her husband, Ross-Alan Tisdale. Seagrape House is located on Anna Maria Island, off the Gulf coast near Sarasota, Florida.
"The house is meant to be a weekend home for them as well as a place for larger family gatherings. My parents and my family live in Tampa, about an hour's drive from the house. My two brothers and our extended family all live up north on the east coast—Philadelphia, Boston, New York—and on any given weekend, somebody is usually in town for a visit.
My idea of the house is of an anchor in the shifting landscape, but we also saw it as an anchor for the family. My parents envisioned it as a place that their kids and grandkids could enjoy, one that would last past their lifetimes and eventually be passed down to me and my brothers. This is why we chose such solid, high-performing materials and why we wanted the house to be able to withstand a potential hurricane. I was inspired by the idea of a concrete bunker on the beach.
Virtually every member of my family is a doctor or scientist of some sort. As an architect, I am the black-sheep—the only artistic brain in the family. My mother is a dermatopathologist; my father, an epidemiologist; my brother, a pathologist specializing in bioinformatics. His wife is also a doctor, researching infectious diseases. My grandfather, Aaron Beck, is a well-known psychologist, who invented cognitive therapy in the 1960s.
Before this project, they didn't know a whole lot about design and architecture. They are rational thinkers, so engrossed in their work that I'm often baffled at how little they notice their physical environment. When they go on vacation, they are often glued to a laptop. I saw the house as an opportunity to reconnect them to their surroundings and open them up to a new way of seeing. I tried to incorporate small gestures that would bring them out of their cerebral world, even just for a moment. For example, there are built-in desks in each guest room to accommodate quiet space for working. The desks all have what we called "St. Jerome boxes," small windows that frame views of the sea while sitting.
The process of designing, building and now inhabiting the home has been exciting for all of us. Before we started this project, my parents could never have visualized a house like this. So far they love it, and they keep telling me that they "miss it" if a week goes by without staying there. I think it's given them an insight into how I see and think. It has definitely brought us closer.
My husband Ross and I met in Los Angeles at Sci-Arc and moved back to Tampa (where I grew up) about seven years ago. We called our firm Traction Architecture, because we met on Traction Street and used to hang out at a coffee shop there."
