Richard Meier & Partners
Neugebauer House
Naples, Florida
Photo courtesy Richard Meier & Partners
Located in a prestigious residential community on a one-and-a-half-acre waterfront site, this house spans the full width of its wedge-shaped plot to face southwest across Doubloon Bay. One approaches the house from a winding access road lined with royal palm trees. The entrance is across the front lawn. This expanse of grass is uninterrupted except for an orthogonal cluster of royal palms and a low opaque cylinder faced with bent panels. This drum discreetly encloses a two-car garage. Since the turf is reinforced throughout, cars and pedestrians are free to circulate across the greensward at will.
Photo courtesy Richard Meier & Partners
Beyond, effectively concealing a view of the water, lies the horizontal front of the house itself, clad in two-foot by three-foot limestone slabs backed by concrete-frame and masonry construction. Pierced at regular intervals by vertical slot windows, this stone-faced facade conceals a wide, top-lit access corridor running the length of the house.
Photo courtesy Richard Meier & Partners
The inhabited volume of the house lies under a large steel-frame butterfly roof cantilevered off steel-box stanchions at 15-foot centers. The inverted roof pitch provided an unexpected way to meet the local design code requiring a pitched roof and at the same time reinforces the house's orientation toward the water. The double-layered roof is finished with 2-foot by 3-foot square panels in pulverized composite stone; its soffit is finished in plaster. The stone paneling on the roof serves solely as a rain screen, with the water drained away beneath.
Photo courtesy Richard Meier & Partners
The roof is also integrated into an elaborate sun-screening system made up of one-inch-diameter aluminum tubes placed at two-inch center that screen the upper part of the oceanfront and span openings in the roof.
Photo courtesy Richard Meier & Partners
The aluminum sub-framed curtain walls are made of hurricane resistant, 1 5/16"-thick laminated glass. The skylight glass is treated with a ceramic frit to provide additional sun-screening.
Drawing courtesy Richard Meier & Partners
Site Plan
Drawing courtesy Richard Meier & Partners
Section through Livingroom
Richard Meier & Partners New York, NY
Project: Neugebauer House Naples, Florida
Client: Klaus and Ursula Neugebauer
Design: 1995-1996
Construction: 1996-1998
Design: Richard Meier, Thomas Phifer
Project Architect: Donald Cox
Collaborators: Greg Reaves, Thomas Savory, Paul Masi, Ron Castellano
Structural and Mechanical Engineers: Ove Arup & Partners New York, NY
Curtain Wall Consultant: R.A. Heintges New York, NY
Lighting Consultant: Fisher Marantz Stone New York, NY
General Contractor: Newbury North Associates Naples, FL
Floor Area: 7,500 square feet (including garage)
Structural System: Concrete slab on concrete foundation comprised of driven concrete piles. Architectural steel columns and curtain wall.
Major Materials: Architectural steel, Spanish limestone, plaster, insulated glass within architectural steel frame and aluminum frame.
July 15, 2001
