Where Sky Meets SeaDesigning Coastal Homes That Breathe

There’s a moment just before sunset when the distinction between ocean and atmosphere blurs—when light scatters across water, and the horizon line becomes more suggestion than boundary. For architects Tadao Ando, Sean Godsell, and Zoltan Pali, this ephemeral transition has inspired some of their most striking oceanfront projects along the coastlines of California, Australia, and beyond. Yet, their approaches vary significantly from each other’s.

“I create enclosed spaces mainly by means of thick concrete walls,” Ando explains in his book Tadao Ando: Conversations with Students. “The primary reason is to create a place for the individual, a zone for oneself within society. When the external factors of a city environment require the wall to be without openings, the interior must be especially full and satisfying.”

The Architecture of Respiration

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Unlike traditional beachfront homes that act as fortified observers of the sea, the new generation of coastal architecture embraces a more symbiotic relationship with marine environments. These homes don’t merely witness the coastal experience—they inhale it.

Acclaimed Australian architect Glenn Murcutt, famous for his philosophy that buildings should “touch the earth lightly,” advocates for architecture that works in harmony with natural forces. Throughout his career, Murcutt has championed designing with climate rather than against it—creating structures that respond to their environment by harnessing natural ventilation, sunlight, and thermal dynamics.

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This approach is evident in Studio Pali Fekete architects’ (SPF:a) Orum Residence—a stunning 18,800-square-foot home perched atop a Bel-Air hill with panoramic views of the Los Angeles basin and the Pacific beyond. The home’s distinctive three-wing plan, each oriented toward a different view, features automated glass walls that completely disappear, transforming enclosed spaces into open-air pavilions.

The central space functions as the home’s lungs. Rising through the heart of the residence, spaces like these create what SPF:a’s Principal Architect Zoltan Pali calls a “vertical volume”—allowing continuous flow of air through the living spaces. Pali is no stranger to designing stunning coastal estates; he was the architect of LA’s Getty Villa and is known for creating “luminous spaces”—per Architectural Digest’s Jeff Turrentine.

Pali’s approach prioritizes capturing coastal breezes, managing natural light, and framing views dynamically throughout his coastal projects. His designs demonstrate a commitment to creating building envelopes that breathe and respond to their environments.

Porous Boundaries

For decades, ocean-facing architecture has prioritized the view above all else—vast windows framing blue expanses like living paintings. While visually stunning, this approach often creates sealed environments that paradoxically separate occupants from the full sensory experience of coastal living. 

As Zaha Hadid once said, “Architecture is really about well-being.” Porous boundaries establish and evolve that connection between humans and nature.

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This approach is perhaps most evident in Australian architect Sean Godsell’s works. Few architects explore the edge between shelter and exposure with as much rigor—and restraint—as Australian architect Sean Godsell. His coastal residences, such as Peninsula House and St. Andrews Beach House, evoke a language of elemental protection: buildings that do not dominate their settings but instead defer to climate, light, and time.

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Godsell describes his approach as one that wraps “a coarse, anti-tectonic outer skin or exoskeleton” around a more intimate, insulated interior—what he calls the “warm underbelly” of the home. In Peninsula House, operable timber shutters and a glass roof are mounted to a weathered steel structure embedded in a sand dune, creating a building that seems to breathe in direct rhythm with the landscape. 

“The house itself is the nurturing inner room, protected from the elements by a coarse outer hide,” he writes. “The interplay of the occupant between these two elements activates the simple form of the building… filtered through timber screens [that] map the course of the day and the time of the year.”

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At St. Andrews Beach House, shutters swing open like gills to modulate sun and wind, while circulation between rooms intentionally exposes the occupant to the elements. “To move from element to element… one has to go outside and then inside,” Godsell explains. “It serves to de-sanitise the controlled 22-degree Celsius built environment… and to remind the occupants of their own frailty.”

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In Godsell’s work, permeability is not just functional—it is philosophical. His homes ask their inhabitants to relinquish full control, to become reacquainted with weather, shadow, and change. In doing so, they fulfill the deeper promise of coastal architecture: not to conquer the sea and sky, but to live in reverent dialogue with them.

Breathing Rooms

The concept of respiration extends to interior spaces as well, where rooms can be designed to expand and contract in response to time, activity, and climate. Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, known for his pioneering use of materials and structural lightness, often designs spaces with movable partitions and permeable boundaries. His architecture prioritizes adaptability—spaces that respond fluidly to the rhythms of the day and the shifting needs of their occupants, rather than remaining fixed and static.

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Interior designer Kelly Wearstler approaches coastal interiors with a similar mindset. Her material choices for homes from Malibu to Miami are not only durable enough to withstand oceanfront climates—they’re deliberately selected for their ability to evolve. In a recent project for an art-collecting family in California, she described the atmosphere as “soulful modern,” noting how the spatial layout and finishes were designed to foster discovery and serenity throughout the day.

“We were really working with the color story of the artworks and with the openings to the exterior, so it was all in synchronicity,” Wearstler explained in an interview with Dezeen’s Dan Howarth. Rooms across the property visually connect through an oval-shaped courtyard and open seamlessly to the outdoors, offering not just views, but a living interplay of air, light, and seasonal change.

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In her work, salt air, shifting light, and humidity aren’t seen as threats to design integrity—they are collaborators. Her interiors breathe with their surroundings, inviting nature inside not only as backdrop but as a co-author of atmosphere and experience.

Resilient Responsiveness

Climate consciousness shapes every aspect of truly breathable coastal architecture. With sea levels rising and weather patterns intensifying, these homes must coexist with their environments but also anticipate and adapt to changing conditions.

Architect Jeanne Gang’s approach exemplifies this thinking. Her Aqua Tower in Chicago, while not a coastal home, offers principles essential to climate-responsive design. Each floor plate of the 82-story structure undulates outward in a rippling rhythm, shaped by sunlight, views, and wind—resulting in a vertical landscape of terraces that provide both shade and social connection. Rather than relying on a uniform façade, the building morphs in response to its context, creating microclimates and airflow patterns that reduce energy demands.

This strategy—using form not for spectacle but for performance—is central to Gang’s philosophy. Buildings, she argues through her work, are not static objects but living systems shaped by their environments. From its expansive green roof to its layered façade, Aqua shows how thoughtful design can weave together ecological sensitivity and human experience, even at the scale of a skyscraper.

The lessons carry easily to coastal homes: layered boundaries, passive strategies, and flexible spaces that respond to sun, wind, and community can create structures that are not just beautiful, but resilient. Architecture, in this view, becomes less about imposition and more about intelligent participation—an active partner in shaping a sustainable future.

The Breath of Life

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As the sun dips toward the horizon, a well-designed coastal home begins its evening transformation. Exterior screens adjust their angle to capture the golden light, interior volumes shift with the rhythms of daily life, and passive systems transition quietly into night mode. These homes are not static shells but dynamic participants in their environments—structures that adapt, attune, and breathe.

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Yet in much of modern architecture, this kind of responsiveness is still quite rare. The tactile element—the feel of surfaces, the sensation of warmth, the invitation to engage physically with space—is often overlooked. As scholar Charles Spence notes in Senses of Place: Architectural Design for the Multisensory Mind, the built environment has largely favored the visual at the expense of all else. Echoing this concern, Richard Sennett once lamented the “sensory deprivation which seems to curse most modern buildings; the dullness, the monotony, and the tactile sterility which afflicts the urban environment.”

Breathable coastal architecture offers an antidote to this sterility. These homes evoke sensation—inviting the rustle of breeze through timber screens, the shift of shadow across limewashed walls, the salt-warmed texture of stone under bare feet. In an age when technology often buffers us from the natural world, such spaces remind us of our embodied selves. They reestablish a primal connection to air, light, temperature, and time.

A truly breathable coastal home doesn’t merely exist beside the sea. Like the human body that is mostly water itself, it becomes a conscious extension of the ocean’s own breath—rising and falling with the tides, expanding and contracting with the seasons, participating in the eternal rhythm where sky meets sea.