Alys Beach Home Radiates Cool Contemporary Style

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Alys Beach stands out among the picturesque communities along Florida’s Highway 30A thanks to its utopian charm. Here, town architects Marieanne Khoury-Vogt and Erik Vogt envisioned an idyllic place with roots in Bermudan, Moorish, Mediterranean, Antiguan, and Spanish Colonial architecture, and while the town’s style may be difficult to pinpoint, its essence is easy to spot and impossible to forget.

“It’s like a lot of places and unlike any other place at the same time,” says architect and developer Walt Chancey who, with his wife and business partner, designer Sandra Chancey, recently built a three-story home here. “Alys Beach is a fantasy world,” says Sandra. “People can’t leave it once they see it.”

The Tampa-based Chanceys previously owned a smaller vacation home nearby, but they jumped at the opportunity to build a new place when a rare square lot, zoned for a four-story tower with a rooftop deck, became available. “The tower is perched above all the roofs of Alys Beach,” says Walt. “Not only does it have fabulous sunrise and sunset views, but also views of the town’s white rooftops and the stars at night.”

The house is located in a part of the community adjacent to a path that leads to the beach, and the Chanceys, self-described extroverts who love being in the middle of the action, have been known to befriend passersby from their bedroom’s balcony. Accordingly, the couple designed their home with generous spaces for entertaining—from a cozy, curtained dining alcove tucked next to a splash pool to a rooftop fireside perch, accessed by outdoor stairs from the floor below.

The home’s dramatic three-story stack of corner windows and flat roof give it more of a contemporary feel than many of its neighbors. “This house has its own language,” says Walt. Those windows also flood the interior with light, deliberately making the outdoors feel like an extension of the interior—and vice versa. Case in point: A lounge tucked just inside the living room windows functions almost like a park bench.

Inside, all the neutral, sculptural furnishings reflect the radiant setting. “It was important to use white because any other color would’ve stopped the flow from the park,” says Sandra. In the living room, curvy sofas and Pumpkin chairs from Ligne Roset echo an outdoor community art installation (visible through the windows) titled Turtle Bale Green by Page | Duke Landscape Architects and artist Dan Hutton that features sculptures of newly born turtles as they make their way to the sea, a common sight in Alys Beach.

Throughout the interior spaces, highly polished plaster walls and ceilings reflect sunlight, while subtle curves carved overhead add hints of Art Deco style. Automated sheers hang directly from narrow channels to eliminate distracting hardware. Wicker chairs and pendants and pale wood furnishings in the dining and kitchen areas are reminiscent of the South of France. Honed marble countertops ground the space with subtle but rich texture.

The second-floor primary suite keeps that minimalist Riviera vibe going. A pair of slipcovered chairs cozy up to the window across from a bed outfitted in richly textured neutrals and flanked by pendants by Siemon and Salazar. In the en-suite bathroom, a freestanding Waterworks tub beneath a brass and crystal chandelier adds bolder glamour.

Up a floor on the third level of the house, a lounge channels a retro vibe, anchored by 1970s Togo chairs and a Michael Ducaroy sofa from Ligne Roset. “The [chairs] swallow you and make it hard to get up,” says Walton. “You can sit there relaxing for hours.” Sandra amplified that resort feel with a gallery wall of photographs from shorelines around the world, extracted from the iconic Richard Misrach book, On the Beach. This room provides access to an outdoor stairway that leads to the rooftop. Up there, an arched chimney cap and curved stairway wall soften the home’s perpendicular lines and echo the Bermudan rooftops beyond.

Perhaps the trickiest feature to design was the ground-floor courtyard. To make space, the Chanceys two-car garage now only has room for one vehicle. However, the sacrifice allowed them to install a plunge pool with gentle fountains flanked by a generously sized dining area bracketed with gauzy curtains that soften the hard edges. The courtyard easily accommodates more than a dozen guests. And at Alys Beach, who needs a second car anyway? In this town, you walk.

Story Credits:

Interior Design by Sandra Chancey & Danijela Anuszewski, Chancey Interior Design, Tampa, FL

Architecture by Walt Chancey & Cameron Hughes, Chancey Architecture, Tampa, FL

Landscape Architecture by Alan Holt, 30A Landscape Architect, Santa Rosa Beach, FL

Text by Betsy Riley

Photography by Jack Gardner, Valparaiso, FL & Mali Azima, Atlanta, GA

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