Like all new builds on Sanibel Island, this modernist home faced numerous constraints, often at odds with one another. The 100-year flood base required the home be lifted well above sea level, while the right-to-light codes (which prevent new builds and renovations from blocking neighbors’ access to sunlight) limited how high they could build. The lot was also dramatically linear, but the state’s Coastal Construction Control Line mandated the footprint preserve protected beach areas, preventing the team from using the full depth of the space. “In addition to dealing with all that’s required to make a coastal home resilient and tolerant to elements like salt and humidity, there are many state, city and federal regulations,” Fort Myers-based Joyce Owens says. But, as an architect building on the islands since 2007, Owens is fluent in coastal codes.
The homeowners also dictated restraint: They wanted clean lines inside and out, and a hidden feel within the natural beachfront landscape. “This site is unique in that it’s this beautiful tropical oasis, but you could drive by and not know it’s there,” landscape architect Leigh Gevelinger, of Sanibel’s Coastal Vista Design, says. “The homeowners wanted it to feel native, layered and textured.”
Reconciling competing demands required some spatial calculus and clever geometric thinking. After all, achieving genuine minimalism requires meticulous attention to detail—there’s nowhere to hide imperfections. For Owens, that meant balancing each room’s scale, light sources and textural materials for warmth. She concentrated all of the living spaces on one level instead of adding a third floor, which allowed her to add soaring ceilings for grandeur in common areas. Lower ceilings in intimately scaled rooms create rhythm, and carefully positioned glass captures Gulf light without glare. The windows also position the landscape as art, adding verdant color to the palette. Natural materials provide subtle depth against the white backdrops: oak panels warm the bedroom and kitchen, textural Atlas Concorde tile animates bathroom walls, and a live-edge dining table anchors the great room.
Photography by Diana Todorova
joyce owens minimalist sanibel home great room
Interiors reveal how thoughtful restraint achieves maximum impact through neutral-hued furnishings, punctuated by moments of bold, abstract art. Previous spread: The walls of a sculptural staircase create an arresting foyer composition; floating wooden steps and moss artwork establish a natural-modern dialogue.
Owens designed the home as three separate wings: two parallel ones with lower heights that follow the lot line and a taller central component set on a diagonal to the others. The eastern wing takes advantage of the lot’s angle toward the beach, jutting past the rest of the home to find clear views of the Gulf. “It feels like you’re on a boat in the middle of the ocean,” Owens says.
A mix of stucco and natural stone delineates the planes, while strategic plantings allow the crisp lines to blur into the landscape. “We wanted to create a sense of calm and serenity, not a kaleidoscope of color,” says Gevelinger, who had the challenge of weaving the large, angular home into the old-growth vegetation. “They didn’t want formal hedging.” To conceal the home, she selected a 25-foot-wide Senegal date palm to anchor the front yard. “One palm did the work of what would otherwise have required numerous elements,” she says. “Finding that perfect palm—it’s almost like finding an art piece.”
Gevelinger added more palms and tropical canopy trees to soften the facade’s sharp edges and obscure the building, which first becomes visible as the driveway curves right. A mature silver date palm provides height, with smaller palms, shrubs, variegated gingers, fan-like tall bearded iris and wart ferns filling out the lower layers. “The wart ferns will grow in to cover the ground completely,” the landscape architect explains. “We wanted to go directly from a managed layer of turf to vegetation.”
Photography by Diana Todorova
Photography by Diana Todorova
Photography by Diana Todorova
Photography by Diana Todorova
Past the driveway, the entryway courtyard is sandwiched between the home’s eastern and western wings. “I’m really into courtyard houses,” Owens explains. “These lots can be so long and narrow that it’s hard to get daylight into all the spaces without them.” Black timber bamboo adds architectural definition, and just inside, glass walls look onto a zen garden. The inner room, decorated simply with a cowhide rug and artwork featuring tufts of moss, leads to a wooden staircase that rises into the central part of the home.
At the top of the stairs, guests enter the double-height great room. “Not having a second story allowed the main space to be spectacular,” Owens adds. The living and dining areas are up a short set of steps flanked by low bookshelves. “We used shelves, instead of a railing, to turn this transition into a furniture element,” she says.
The homeowners directed the furnishings to be casually minimalist. Wood elements balance the white and connect to the outdoors, while sheer curtains lend a softness to the rooms. In the living area, Owens incorporated lighting at the bottom of the cypress transom, as well as inside a trough at its top. “In the evening, the lighting changes the whole space,” she says. The tinted windows are ‘turtle glass,’ which prevents the lights from being seen from outside the house, protecting hatchlings from getting derailed by faux illumination.
Photography by Diana Todorova
joyce owens minimalist sanibel home living
In the jutting eastern wing’s family room, floor-to-ceiling windows frame endless Gulf views while respecting building codes. Slip-covered furnishings maintain the minimalist aesthetic while adding organic, beachy warmth.
The western wing holds the primary suite, consisting of a bedroom, a dressing room and closet, and two bathrooms with doors leading to balconies at each end. Washed oak paneling gives the bedroom a sense of warmth. In the dual bathrooms, mirrors and vanities float against different textures of Atlas Concorde Axi porcelain tile for a layered effect. “We tiled everything, every wall, using different textures of the same material,” Owens says.
The eastern wing is the longest of the three volumes. It comprises the kitchen, a family room, two bedrooms with en suite bathrooms, a bonus room and utility spaces. In the kitchen, Owens incorporated functional storage hidden behind natural-toned oak SieMatic cabinetry and pocket doors, which open to reveal an additional workspace. “The homeowner really loves things put away, for this room to look simple and minimal,” the architect says. For casual dining, a charcoal gray soapstone breakfast table appears to float from the island.
The star of this wing is the family room, which projects out toward the Gulf of Mexico with floor-to-ceiling windows to capture the view. “When you stand in that room, you can look down the beach for miles,” Owens says. Gevelinger shaped the existing vegetation with the windows in mind. “That wing projects you forward toward the dune, giving you expansive views of the sunset,” she says. “We kept as much of the existing canopy as we could and sculpted the old-growth sea grapes to create some views.”
The focal point of the backyard is the trapezoidal pool, whose unusual shape was dictated by local regulations. “It’s built right up to the Coastal Construction Control Line,” Owens says. The pool interior is finished in PebbleTec (a blend of cement, small stones and pigments that create a natural, textured finish) in the shade of Sandy Beach. The taupe hue mimics the ocean, appearing blue under deeper water. Native grasses, seagrapes and coco plums dot the backyard. “We used different kinds of linear elements to play against the angle of the pool and the property,” she says. “We didn’t need too much vegetation with this view.”
The home’s design proved crucial when it was struck by Hurricane Ian in 2022. While nearby properties were blown off their foundations, the house fared well—no structural damage, no broken windows. Owens credits the below-ground concrete pilings she installed for rooting the home and the lower level reinforced (shear) walls—engineered with ‘breakaway’ sections to allow water to filter through while supporting the structure—for keeping the living areas intact. ‘The owner joked he could have stayed on the upper deck with a glass of wine during the storm, though he might have died of a heart attack,’ Gevelinger says, noting how all that was affected was the landscaping.
In rebuilding the grounds, Gevelinger’s team found themselves revisiting their original challenge: balancing human design with natural forces. “We continue to manipulate the environment we’re in, but we also have to respect it,” she says. “Mother Nature’s gonna win no matter what, so we have to be realistic.”
But, the site’s demands ultimately sparked deeper creativity. “This design is the manifestation of all the restrictions that were required on Sanibel,” Owens says. What emerged is a home practiced in architectural restraint, where necessity welcomes pure, purposeful beauty.
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Photography by Diana Todorova
joyce owens minimalist sanibel home front
Three distinct volumes—two parallel wings and a taller central structure—rise from the site’s strict parameters with grace. The trapezoidal pool’s shape was dictated by the Coastal Construction Control Line. A grass surround (instead of decking) and PebbleTec tiles offer an organic look to balance the clean lines.
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Photography by Diana Todorova
joyce owens minimalist sanibel home pool