Located on an estuary of Prien Lake, straddling the Louisiana/Texas border, Pelican House exudes an elevated cabin aesthetic. Swathed in Western red cedar and embellished with Texas Lueder limestone columns, broad overhangs, and exposed wood beams, it’s a beautiful bayou home buoyed by glass walls that connect it to the surrounding landscape – and keep it safe when Mother Nature rages.
“It’s a very picturesque location, but it’s also, as you would imagine, a very stormy location,” says architect Winn Wittman, who designed the home for indoor-outdoor living in the Gulf Coast climate. Hugged and hammered by nature, Pelican House has withstood four hurricanes, both during and after construction. “The only evidence of the hurricanes is that the wood that was smooth initially now has a sandblasted appearance,” Wittman says.
Home to a doctor, his nurse wife, and their five children, the 7,500 square-foot house utilizes sliding glass doors, glass walls, and custom-size windows to create a seamless connection
between the inside and the outside, and to provide the family with expansive views of the surrounding wetlands and the distant bridge that connects Louisiana to Texas.
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Stacking multi-slide door creates a seamless connection between the indoor living area and the outdoor space, enhancing the flow and maximizing natural light.
“It’s a large home, but it’s also broken up into a series of pavilions, which gives it a more human scale,” Wittman explains. Two shed roofs bookend a gabled volume, with panes of glass connecting to slightly elevated roof planes.
The living room features a 24-foot-high ceiling with floor-to-ceiling glass. One of the most stunning features of the home is the way the living room seems to flow right into the lake. “We wanted the living room to connect to the water, and we designed the home in such a way that there is an 82-foot-long swimming pool with a negative edge that visually blends with the water of the lake below,” Wittman says. “So, when you’re standing in the living room, you feel as though the lake is coming right up to you.”
A large glass pivot door provides a memorable entry. “It’s quite striking when you walk up to the house,” Wittman says. “Having specified a lot of these large pivot doors, I know that many of them easily go out of adjustment or they begin to scrape or bind, and we haven’t had any such issues with the Western Window Systems product.”
Because he was designing a home for a large family, Wittman says it was critical to “create areas for connection and areas for privacy.” That was achieved by designing spaces for the kids upstairs and giving the parents a separate wing of the home, accessed through a glassed-in corridor. For even more privacy while maintaining a connection to nature, Wittman put floor-to-ceiling windows in the main bathroom, which open onto a private courtyard shielded from the neighboring golf course by dense vegetation.
The moving glass walls throughout the house are protected by large overhangs that extend slightly onto balconies. The balconies create a shelter for the patio below, which has a large TV that swings down into the outdoor area, essentially creating an indoor-outdoor media room.
A striking entryway featuring a modern pivot door flanked by fixed windows, making a memorable first impression.
From the inside looking out, bi-parting sliding doors and direct set trapezoid windows frame a breathtaking view of the lake, merging indoor comfort with the serenity of the natural landscape.
When facilitating indoor-outdoor living in a humid subtropical climate, sliding glass doors’ functionality must be as seamless as the connection between the interior and the exterior. “Obviously, you’ve got insects close to the river, and the doors need to be easily opened and closed,” Wittman says. “Given the size of the glass, we wanted to select a sliding door that rolled freely. And the Western Windows Systems slider is very easy to open and close, even in these larger panels.”
Architect: Winn Wittman
Dealer: Creative Door
Builder: Russel Stutes Construction
Landscape architect: Carbo Landscape Architecture
