New lakeside Palm Beach house recognized with Schuler Award for architectural excellence

A lakefront house designed for indoor-outdoor living on one of the highest sites in Palm Beach has been honored by the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach for excellence in new architecture.

Richard Sammons accepted the Elizabeth L. and John H. Schuler Award Friday on behalf of his firm for the design of the house at 726 Hi Mount Road on the North End. Sammons is a principal of Fairfax, Sammons & Partners in Palm Beach, which also has an affiliated office in New York City. Architect Anne Fairfax looked on as her husband, the lead architect for the house, accepted the award.

Energy investor Marcel van Poecke and his businesswoman wife, Irina Liner — the couple who built the house — also were honored during the presentation at the foundation’s Palm Beach headquarters on Peruvian Avenue. The house on Hi Mount Road is a seasonal residence for the couple, who live in Belgium.

Van Poecke and Sammons thanked the foundation for the honor during the ceremony in which the architect gave an illustrated presentation about the stately house.

With classical design elements, two stories and a basement, the house’s architecture blends the English Regency style with Caribbean influences. The five-bedroom house has about 18,375 square feet of living space, inside and out.

The house was designed to take advantage of the property’s unusual topography. On the west side of the estate, the land slopes down dramatically from the street level to the Lake Trail walking path and the Intracoastal Waterway.

The design intentionally nods at the architecture of a demolished home that stood for years on the property, explained Sammons, who is vice chairman of the Palm Beach Architectural Commission. That 1938 house was designed with traditional architecture by Treanor & Fatio, the firm of noted society architect Maurice Fatio, although it had been much altered with additions over the years.

“I purposely chose to evoke the old house,” Sammons said during his presentation.

The new house has two lakeside terraces, each with a swimming pool. Landscape architect Raymond Jungle designed the grounds.

Among the home’s notable features are a central living room completely open to the elements on the lakefront side; and a two-story pavilion with an outdoor dining area above a lounge area that serves one of the two swimming pools.

During the ceremony, foundation President and CEO Amanda Skier said the architecture “blends seamlessly” with its surroundings.

“The new residence exemplifies the best of traditional Palm Beach charm while incorporating a forward-thinking approach to landscape design that responds to our ever-increasing climate concerns,” Skier said.

The house’s design was approved by the town in 2018, the year after van Poecke and Liner bought the property, but was not completed until 2023.

During his remarks, van Poecke acknowledged his wife for her dedication to the project, which he said was complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We were not able to come to the United States,” he said, referencing pandemic-related travel restrictions. But despite those challenges, he said, “it all came together.” He thanked Sammons and the rest of the design team for their efforts.

Interior designers Lillian Fernandez and Crista Kobza provided the home with contemporary-style interiors. Chris Glapinski of Fairfax, Sammons & Partners was the project architect for the house, which was built by Hedrick Brothers. David Hustad was the structural engineer.

The ceremony marked the second time Sammons accepted a Schuler Award. His firm was last honored in 2016 for an Italian-style house at 670 Island Drive on Palm Beach’s Everglades Island.

Friday’s awards were presented by John Schuler Jr., the son of the late Palm Beach couple who established the honor in 2005.

The Schulers, Skier said, “saw there was a need for the Preservation Foundation to expand its influence by recognizing (high-)quality architectural design that maintains and enhances our town’s unique sense of place.”

The Schuler Award, she added, is a reminder that “preservation is about the management of change.”

The award complements others given by the foundation, including the Robert I. Ballinger Award, which recognizes historically sensitive restoration and renovation projects at older Palm Beach estates.

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To see more photos of the 2024 Schuler Award-winning house at 726 Hi Mount Road in Palm Beach, click on the photo gallery at the top of this page.

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Darrell Hofheinz is a USA TODAY Network of Florida journalist who writes about Palm Beach real estate in his weekly “Beyond the Hedges” column. He welcomes tips about real estate news on the island. Email dhofheinz@pbdailynews.com, call 561-820-3831 or tweet @PBDN_Hofheinz. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: What earned this new Palm Beach house a key architecture award?