Robert Cole and Sophie Prévost have been designing houses and interiors from their home base in Washington, DC, for the better part of two decades. As modernists in a city known for classical architecture, the married couple—he’s an architect, she’s an interior designer—seeks to bring a fresh perspective to historic and new homes alike, dreaming up something unexpected. Prévost, who hails from Monaco, studied painting restoration before coming to the United States in 1984 and Cole taught architecture for 17 years in this country as well as in Britain and Australia. They met at Catholic University in 1989 and launched their business, ColePrévost, Inc., four years later. 

Since then, Prévost and Cole have designed a flurry of projects, including Manhattan and London apartments, five show house rooms in The Washington Design Center and a modernist residence on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The pair approaches waterfront design with the same rigor they bring to city homes, while recognizing that the two environments demand very different solutions.

In contrast to urban dwellings, which need to be protective and introverted, waterfront houses are all about light and looking out to nature. Yet glare reflected off the water is a huge problem on seaside properties, Cole says. One way to modulate light is to make the house as thin as possible so that it’s illuminated from at least two directions and allows for cross-ventilation. “You want to take advantage of all the special things about being on the water—air coming through and the lightness that represents,” Cole says. “You want to live between inside and out.”

In furnishing waterfront interiors, Prévost chooses objects in sync with what Mother Earth dishes out. In a house where the windows are open and outdoor views are paramount, she looks for materials that are true to their nature—raw woods and fade-resistant white fabrics—as reflected in her design picks for waterfront homes on these and the following pages. “What I like about all these pieces is that they’re quite simple,” Prévost says. “They’re about texture and real materials like oak and steel. There’s a clean line and the objects are strong, not delicate. They can withstand wear and tear and the weather.”