Morning light moves through the trees near Buzzards Bay, settling across a house that brings multiple lives together beneath a single roof. From the outside, Well House holds a calm, unified presence within its wooded Cape Cod setting. Inside, it reveals a more intricate condition: two homes interwoven within one form, shaped around the rhythms of a multigenerational family and carefully designed for shared living.
For homeowner Rachel Hodgdon, the premise carried both familiarity and surprise. “If you told me when I was 18 years old that someday I would choose to move back in with my parents,” she recalls with a smile, “I would’ve told you that you were nuts.” Yet the reality of the finished home speaks to something deeper than pragmatism or convenience: It reflects a renewed model of domestic life, where proximity fosters continuity and daily connection.
Neubauer Ennis Architects approached the project with clarity from the outset. The house needed to support three generations while preserving autonomy, allowing each household to function independently without sacrificing a sense of belonging to a larger whole. The result is an architecture that reads as singular from the street, yet unfolds internally into a carefully orchestrated sequence of shared and private spaces.
Two Homes, One Envelope
From the exterior, the house presents itself as a single volume, composed with restraint and attuned to its surroundings. Inside, the plan is divided into two distinct domains, each with its own circulation and spatial sequences. Separate staircases and kitchens allow each generation to operate independently, while shared zones — particularly at ground level and outdoors — become spaces of overlap.
“We wanted to build a home that could feel like it was one big house, sharing a front door and communal spaces, but also create privacy for the different parts of the family,” explains architect Johanna Reed Melvin.
This balance is expressed most clearly in the transitional spaces. A screen porch, lined by Marvin Modern operable windows, opens toward an outdoor kitchen, shifting from enclosure to openness depending on season and use. The basement and garage provide additional shared infrastructure, supporting everyday life without disrupting the autonomy of each household above.
For Hodgdon, the arrangement extends beyond practicality. “It’s been so incredible, especially now that we have a son, to be living in this multi-generational context,” she says. “It gives us extra support… but more importantly, it’s just the joy of being together as a family.” The architecture accommodates that sentiment without forcing it, allowing togetherness to emerge organically through proximity and design.
Framing Light, Air and Daily Life
Set within a landscape of trees and coastal air, the house is oriented to draw in light while maintaining a sense of privacy from neighboring homes. Openings are placed with precision, framing views outward and allowing daylight to shape the interior throughout the day.
Windows and doors become critical to this strategy. Rather than acting as secondary elements, they structure the relationship between inside and outside, establishing a continuous dialogue between the two. Operable units are distributed throughout the house, encouraging occupants to engage directly with their environment.
This approach is reinforced through the integration of the Marvin Modern collection. From early in the design process, the system supported the project’s spatial ambitions, offering both the scale and detailing needed to maintain visual clarity across the façade and interior.
“The desire for a strong connection between the inside and the outside guided our decision to Marvin Modern,” says Reed Melvin. “The clients were drawn to the clean lines of the profile, and we highlighted that with the way we framed the windows themselves.”
Aesthetic consistency was essential. Fixed and operable windows are indistinguishable from each other visually, allowing them to be used interchangeably across elevations without drawing attention to their differences. “One of the wonderful things about Marvin Modern is that the operable windows and the direct glaze windows have the same profile, so they sit together really quietly,” Reed Melvin notes. “There’s less indication of what’s operable versus not operable.”
This detail supports the architecture’s broader intent. The choice of windows enables one’s gaze to shift outward towards the landscape, uninterrupted by visual clutter, while the occupants retain full control over airflow and ventilation. “Most of the windows in this home are operable so that we have access to bringing in fresh air and experiencing the outside,” Reed Melvin adds. “We wanted you to be able to open the windows whenever inspired to do so.”
For Hodgdon, this connection between performance and experience is essential. “When it comes to designing a healthy home, windows play an extraordinarily important role,” she explains. “They provide a sense of place, access to the outdoors… and the daylight that helps improve everything from mood and focus to a better night’s sleep.”
Material Clarity and Precision
Material decisions throughout the house reinforce a desire for measured clarity that was shared by both architect and client. The palette is restrained, allowing light and proportion to define the experience of space. Dark exterior cladding anchors the structure within its wooded setting, while interior finishes introduce warmth through wood surfaces and carefully detailed joinery.
The Modern collection plays a central role in this balance. Its minimal frames align with the architectural language, while its engineered performance supports the demands of a high-efficiency envelope. Marvin’s High-Density Fiberglass construction allows for slender profiles without compromising structural integrity, enabling large openings that remain precise and durable.
“Our goal for this home was to create an incredibly robust exterior envelope,” says Reed Melvin. “We specify triple-pane windows on all of our new construction homes because that is a critical part of the overall system.”
That performance underpins the design’s openness. Large areas of glazing admit daylight deep into the plan while maintaining thermal stability and acoustic comfort. The envelope works subtly in the background, allowing the architecture to feel effortless without sacrificing rigor.
Architecture in Service of Family
Well House demonstrates a disciplined approach to domestic design, one that prioritizes how people live over how buildings present themselves. Neubauer Ennis Architects translated a complex brief into a clear spatial framework, supporting independence and connection in equal measure.
The project resolves competing needs with precision. It accommodates aging in place while supporting the energy of a young family, allowing for solitude without isolation. It engages the surrounding landscape while maintaining privacy. Each decision contributes to a broader understanding of what it means to live well together.
For architects exploring multigenerational housing with refined detailing and high-performance glazing, learn more about the Modern collection at Marvin.com.
All images courtesy of Marvin © Yoni Goldberg Studio
