A beach house is a house on or near a beach, sometimes used as a vacation or second home for people who commute to the house on weekends or during vacation periods. Beach houses are often designed to weather the type of climate they are built in and the building materials and construction methods used in beach housing vary widely around the world.
Beach houses are often associated with beach gardens with a special planting and a particular type of leisure use. One of the most famous twentieth century beach gardens was constructed by Derek Jarman at Dungeness, England. It celebrated local materials, native plants and the openness of the site. Other beach gardens have tried to create an isolated microclimate. Swimming pools are popular in beach gardens. American architect Andrew Geller designed sculptural beach houses in the coastal regions of New England during the 1950s and 60s.
Famous quotes containing the words beach and/or house:
“The dominant and most deep-dyed trait of the journalist is his timorousness. Where the novelist fearlessly plunges into the water of self-exposure, the journalist stands trembling on the shore in his beach robe.... The journalist confines himself to the clean, gentlemanly work of exposing the griefs and shames of others.”
—Janet Malcolm (b. 1934)
“In America a woman loses her independence for ever in the bonds of matrimony. While there is less constraint on girls there than anywhere else, a wife submits to stricter obligations. For the former, her father’s house is a home of freedom and pleasure; for the latter, her husband’s is almost a cloister.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)