Jennifer Bonner / MALL Brings Playful Rebellion to Kate's House in Santa Rosa Beach

Access Dropbox Press Kit

Santa Rosa Beach, FL - Kate's House is a ground-up residential project designed by architectural designer Jennifer Bonner, founder of MALL. The 2,650-square-foot home's inventive design elements bring playful rebellion to a beach house under strict homeowner's association design guidelines. The house quietly makes a bold statement through custom carpentry, clever riffs on traditional roof and facade forms, and curation of materials, furniture, and objects evoking the surrounding Floridian landscape. The interior design was led by Carol Mockbee of Mockbee Design.

The home is located on the Gulf Coast of Florida near the New Urbanist town of Seaside. It is situated by a series of coastal dune lakes, a unique ecological area. The project was an especially meaningful one, as the client was Bonner's own family. It was a way to honor their late stepfather's dream to build a beach house with his wife, Bonner's mother and the home's namesake, who took over the family carpentry business after her husband's passing. They decided to come together as a family around bringing that dream to life, and featuring their own custom millwork in the design.

The house is comprised of two slightly offset, abutting massings that form a pair of twin gable roofs. The rear massing piggybacks a street-facing massing. Their traditionally framed high roofs, pitched 12:12, are overscaled to self-shade breezy exterior porches on the second level. Their overhangs extend as swooping edges, a visual motif that is constant throughout the exterior and interior.

The roof eaves create a rounded color-blocked frame hanging over each embedded porch. The eaves are painted on the inside to mimic the hue of "pink hour" dusk light native to the Florida panhandle. These pink undersides not only block direct sun, but also reflect a warm blush color back onto the white house. With the "blushing" evoking the color transitions of a sunset, the result is conceptually linked to MALL's interest in gradient lighting effects.

The homeowner's association design guidelines required a symmetrical facade and front porch. To meet this requirement, MALL built out two "false fronts." The first is a porch on the street-facing side of the house, one that is too narrow for lounging but wide enough to be a path towards the entry. The second is legible on the interior of the second floor bedroom and bathroom as in-set nooks and niches. MALL also bent some design rules: the sweeping, cheeky "side bang" of a roof overhang at the house's rear facade is an instance of asymmetry.

This is but one of many examples of MALL's interest in "cuteness" as a powerful and subversive element in design. Says Bonner, "Cuteness shrinks the gap between object and person, through a sort of emoting. Cuteness is also a form of rebellion, where softness pushes back against hardness and humor distracts from restrictions."

Curving lines and geometry of the roofing surfaces are echoed in the interior, starting with round-edged, paneled white oak accent walls flanking a double-height living space. These walls mimic the framing beneath the gypsum board and the exposed rafter tails. Flatness, graphics, and semi-circular forms emerge as design motifs. A spherical, bright indigo headboard hovers over a primary bed like a rising sun. An earthy grey stone kitchen floor meets the warm wood of the dining nook with a wide curve.

Mockbee's interior design draws from the beach conceptually rather than literally through the themes of accumulation, fragment, and erosion. This is expressed with terrazzo, tonal shifts, and layered materials assembled as a collage. The disciplined repetition of the block - rectilinear massing, millwork volumes, and even the sofas - operate as architectural forms that ground the space, while reflection, curvature, and color destabilize that rigidity. Bold color-blocked spaces and ombré painted walls are intentional against what is otherwise white. Sparing use of color in the architecture allows Mockbee to let the interiors lead with a lush palette. Repetition in form evokes the cycles of nature - sunrises and sunsets, tidal ebbs and flows. Mirrored reflective surfaces underscore the movement of the sun and invite pause, such as with a blue convex mirror that washes the room in blue in the span of a morning hour. Drawing from local nature continues throughout the home's bathrooms and kitchens with terrazzo tiles combined in large and small scale to mimic sand.

This restrained, metaphor-embracing approach stems from Mockbee's philosophy of "Subiconic" design: a technique that prioritizes authenticity, intellectual integrity, and restraint over abundance in design. It eschews obviousness and opts for something intuitive and under-the-radar, evincing its own iconicity. Says Mockbee, "There is something about Southern vernacular that forces invention. When resources are limited, creativity sharpens. Some of the strongest work comes from constraint, and it grounds a designer in the process." Mockbee styled the house with a collection of drawings and prints from Southern-based artists and architects including Patrick Puckett, Tim Hursley, and her father, the late architect and artist Samuel Mockbee.

At street level, the house sits on a charcoal grey foundation. "It reads almost like a floating object, like a buoy, gull, or duck in the water," says Mockbee. The fully white facade of horizontal siding, perfectly symmetrical window placement, and 45-degree pitched roof could register as stark, but met with the whimsical curves of Bonner's roof design, the result is something elegantly caricaturesque. MALL and Mockbee Design capitalize on "cuteness," and integrity and restraint to create a subversive architecture that blends into its context, all the while expressing its unique personality.

Photography by Tim Hursley

Photography by Brooke Holm

Access Dropbox Press Kit

CREDITS:

Project Team: Jennifer Bonner/MALL (Architect), Sam Sheffer (Project Designer) Mockbee

Design/Carol Mockbee (Interior Designer)

Engineers: Structural Engineer: Bayside Engineering & Consulting, LLC

Civil Engineer: Nautilus Civil Engineers, Inc

Consultants: Carpentry: Trimco Inc.

SPECIFICATIONS:

Structural System

Manufacturer of any structural components unique to this project: prefabricated roof trusses and floor joists Tibbetts Lumber Co.

Exterior Cladding

Wood: Nichiha fiber cement cladding

Stucco applied to CMU exterior walls at the garage level

Roofing

Metal: Corrugated Metal

Glazing

Glass: MI Windows (Impact)

Doors

Entrances: Neuma Patio Impact Doors

Upswinging doors, other: Coastal Insulation (garage door)

Hardware

Pulls: Kwikset (Prava Satin Brass Hall/Closet Door Handle)

Security devices: Eufy Wifi Locks

Interior Finishes

Cabinetwork and custom woodwork:

RTA Wood Cabinets (Kitchen Cabinets)

Ikea (PAX Wardrobes)

Trimco Inc (Custom interior carpentry)

Paints and stains: Sherwin Williams SW6617 “Blushing” (Exterior roof eaves)

Wall coverings: Feathr (Wallpaper)

Tilebar: True Terrazzo Kashmir (all bathroom floors and shower walls)

Kobe Flakes Ice White 24x24 Terrazzo Look Matte Porcelain Tile (ADU Kitchen)

Kobe Cement Ice White 24x48 Terrazzo Look Matte Porcelain Tile (Kitchen)

Kobe Cement Smoke Gray 24x48 Terrazzo Look Matte Porcelain Tile (Kitchen)

Tileclub: Groove Terracotta Matte Ceramic Subway, Groove Pink Deco Matte Ceramic Subway

Tile (ADU Bathroom)

Groove Laurel Matte Ceramic Subway Tile (Bathroom)

Special interior finishes: Trimco Inc. (Wood wall details)

Furnishings

Office furniture: Desk By Trimco Inc

Fixed seating: ADU Bench, Bunkbeds, Built-in Desk, Entry Bench By Trimco Inc.

Chairs: Hernest (Dining Chairs), Safavieh (Livingroom chair),

Geof Lilge for Division Twelve Resto Bar Stool, Design Public (kitchen stools)

Tables: Fourhands (Coffee Table)

Rugs: Nordic Knots

Other furniture: FGD Glass Solutions (Custom Dining Table Top)

Convex Mirror Company (Portofino Blue Convex Mirror)

Fourhands (Beds)

Lighting

Interior ambient lighting: Blueprint Lighting, Radilum, Design Within Reach, Residence Supply

(pendants, sconces, speciality lights)

Dimming system or other lighting controls: MOES Wifi Dimmer Switch

Plumbing

Rainlex (shower trim, faucets, & drains), VIGO (faucet)

Duravit ME by Starck (Wall-mounted toilets)

Concretti (half bath sink)

Vigo (bathroom sink)

Kraus Undermount Stainless Steel Sink (Kitchen sink)

ARTWORK:

Dining Room

Patrick Puckett Nightswimmers. Samuel Mockbee Madison House (SM 073). Samuel Mockbee Madison House (SM 074).

Living Room

Tim Hursley Rt 80 Near Bovina MS. Samuel Mockbee Sagaponac House.

Bedroom

Samuel Mockbee Sagaponac House (SM 051).