Waterfront

A house on the water in Fairfield County is drawn under more constraints than almost any other house in the county, and most of them are invisible from the street. The shoreline sets a floor height before the client has described a single room. The view sets the order of the floors. The neighbours, who were there first, have views of their own. This chapter is about how those three things shape the studio’s houses along Long Island Sound and the Saugatuck River.

The floor is set by the water

The first number on a waterfront drawing is often not a room size but an elevation. FEMA’s flood maps divide the coast into zones, and the zone a parcel falls in decides how high the house must sit.

In Westport, under the town’s rules as checked on October 9, 2026, a house in an AE zone must place its first-floor living space one foot above the base flood elevation. In the Coastal A area, where waves are expected but are smaller than in the open coast, the town applies the stricter rule used in VE zones: the lowest horizontal structural member, not just the floor, must sit one foot above the base flood elevation. In a VE zone, the coastal high-hazard area, a house should expect an open foundation of piles or columns and tight limits on what can be enclosed beneath it. Darien’s regulations set the residential lowest floor, basement included, at least one foot above the base flood elevation in AE zones.

These rules change the architecture. A raised first floor needs a stair or a ramp to reach it, which puts the front door higher off the ground than on an inland house. The space under the floor becomes a question of its own: what may be enclosed there, and what must stay open. The whole section of the house starts higher, and the first sketch has to begin from that line. A parcel’s zone is never assumed: it is read from the official map for that parcel at FEMA’s Map Service Center, and confirmed with the town before the footprint is fixed.

The view sets the order of the floors

On an inland lot the main living rooms usually go on the ground floor, beside the garden. On the water, the best view is often higher up. Vita Design Group wrote in 2016 that on some sites it is the top floors that see the most of the water, and that the studio tries to give water views to as many rooms as it can.

The houses in this chapter show that logic in different ways. On Riverside Avenue, on the Saugatuck River, a four-storey house of 1,800 square feet puts the living rooms on a main level wrapped in glass and gives the top floor a balcony toward the river. In Fairfield, a 2,800-square-foot house on a small coastal lot uses steel to open its main floor and turns its attic into an office. On the Westport shoreline, Dockside uses steel-framed glass and accordion doors so the main rooms can open fully to the water.

The neighbours were there first

The same 2016 note added a condition: the views should be gained without blocking the views the neighbours already had. On a crowded shoreline that is a real limit. It affects the height of a ridge, where a roof deck goes, and how far a wing can extend toward the water. It is also one of the reasons many of these houses keep a familiar shingle roof and a modest outline. A house that sits quietly among its neighbours is easier to live beside, and the shingle tradition of the New England coast has been solving that problem for over a century.

The reviews a shoreline site adds

Building near the water in Westport adds reviews that an inland house may never meet. The town’s rules include these:

• Coastal Site Plan Review. Development wholly or partly inside the state coastal boundary shown on the town’s zoning map goes to the Planning and Zoning Commission or the Zoning Board of Appeals for coastal review, unless exempt. Interior changes are exempt. Residential additions are generally exempt, except additions within 200 feet of the mean high-water line that enlarge the building by more than 25 percent. A coastal approval becomes void if no zoning permit is issued within a year, unless extended. (Westport coastal regulations)
• The Waterway Protection Line. The town states that about half of Westport is regulated by this ordinance, which can bring conservation review to grading, drainage, retaining walls and driveways even when the house itself is outside a mapped wetland. (Westport Conservation Department)
• State and federal approvals. Work in tidal wetlands or in tidal and navigable waters, such as a dock, a seawall or fill, generally needs a separate approval from the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, and may also fall under the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. A local coastal approval does not cover either. (CT DEEP tidal and coastal permits)

Neither Westport nor Darien publishes a typical time for most of these steps. The reliable sequence is to establish the parcel’s zoning district, coastal-boundary status and flood zone before design begins, then to meet the town’s zoning, building and conservation staff before construction drawings are finished. Fairfield and the other shoreline towns have their own regulations.

The houses

The three houses that follow sit on three different kinds of water: the Westport shoreline at Dockside, a working river in the middle of a town on Riverside Avenue, and a tight coastal lot in Fairfield. Each answers the same questions of floor height, view and neighbour, and each answers them differently.

Elsewhere in Vita Design Group’s waterfront work, a house in Saugatuck, Westport, credited to Vita Design Group with Lucien Vita and David Denomme, received the 2023 HOBI Award for Best Custom Home 5,000-6,000 SF. Connecticut Builder described its Accoya siding and a kitchen that looks toward the Sound.