WHEN BEN AND JENNIFER BARWICK MET ARCHITECT Parker Platt as college students back in 1992, the friends never envisioned that nearly three decades later they would be collaborating on a beautiful modern beach home in Topsail, North Carolina. “Years and years ago, when I was in my twenties, I got to spend time at Ben’s family beach home,” explains Platt. “So to have the opportunity to work on this home thirty years later is amazing.”
The Barwicks’ one-story cinder block beach home had been ravaged and flooded by Hurricane Fran in 1996, and then rebuilt. But after hurricane Floyd, in 1999, the home was beyond repair and was eventually torn down. For years the lot stood empty, but in 2020, the Barwicks decided to purchase the home from Ben’s siblings and build their own beach house. “Jennifer and I have always dreamed about building a beach house and having Parker design it for us, but it had always just been talk,” explains Barwick.
“Then, all of a sudden, it was a reality. The beautiful thing was that Parker is such a good friend of ours and he knows us already, so we didn’t really have to explain what we wanted—he just knew.” The couple, who resides full-time in Five Points, enlisted Platt to design the home along with CH Architects. Just as the project began with friends working together, it continued with Platt recommending longtime mutual and close friend Bo Taylor to design all the custom millwork throughout the home. “Jennifer and Parker and Bo and I would sit around Parker’s mountain home drinking wine while planning out the home and what it was going to look like,” says Barwick of the initial design stages. “Part of what made this project so special was who was working on it with us.
They all know us so well that they knew what we’d want.” Jennifer Barwick’s friend, designer Abby Ross of Modest Modern Design, was a natural choice to head up the interior design, as well. “Abby’s aesthetic really aligned with what we wanted and maybe even skewed more modern than ours,” explains Barwick. “But we loved that she pushed the envelope a bit.”
From the start, the focus of the home’s architecture and interior design was the setting. Located on the sound side of the island, the home has stunning water and sunset views. “The most important part of this home is the place and the experience—the sound, the sunsets, the sunrise, the boating—and this house takes advantage of all of that and does it in an elemental way that the house doesn’t get in the way,” explains Platt. “The house makes a statement, but it doesn’t do anything to interrupt that magnificent setting. It simply allows people to take it in.”
A large open floor plan that blends seamlessly with the exterior living spaces was a necessity, as the Barwicks wanted the space to be comfortable for large groups to gather. The kitchen, family room, and dining area spill over to the screened-in porch, which bleeds into the balcony deck area with sweeping sound views. The transitions are simple but mindful, and made ever more seamless with the clean lines of the white-oak millwork by Taylor and the interior design choices by Ross. “All of these living spaces are connected with a single line of sight,” says Ross. “It was critical that the furniture and fixtures in the space blended seamlessly into one another and the elements spoke to each other. The goal was to create a modern clean-lined aesthetic with a casual California style.” She achieved this with the use of natural materials “that embrace the imperfections, a simple timeless palette, and strategic bohemian accents.”
Each space is minimally but thoughtfully designed with organic finishes, such as the white-oak paneling and cabinetry that extends the length of the downstairs living areas. Ross complemented that with contemporary furniture like the kitchen counter stools from Design Within Reach and the Flag Halyard chair and ottoman made from rope, reminiscent of a boat tie, in the family room. “It was eally about adding very minimal and new modern high-quality furniture to each space,” says Ross. “The overarching theme for everyone was to allow the outdoors to be the star in this home.”
Now that the home is completed, the house is often filled with the Barwicks’ family and friends after lazy days at the beach or forquiet escapes in the fall and spring. “That’s really the best time of the year here, spring and fall and even winter, when the island is quiet and you can really enjoy its beauty,” says Ben. “I think what made this project so special was not just that it was my family’s lot and I grew up coming here, but it was that so much love and care went into this because of who was involved from the start. And I think that’s unusual for a home-build to have everyone care so much about one project and feel so invested in it. That truly is what made this so special for us.”