By day, the light streaming through the oculus at this house in Alys Beach, Florida, casts shadows that stripe the furnishings and pool surface below, creating an engaging rhythm of shapes. At night, interior designer Rozanne Jackson and her architect husband, Glen Oxford, look through the twelve-by-eighteen-foot opening to see the stars.

“At the right time each night, we look up and also see the moon within it,” says Jackson, who is the proprietor and founder of Nashville’s The Iron Gate, a source for home furnishings. As often as she and her husband can, they make the seven-hour drive from Nashville to their second home in Alys Beach, an architecturally distinctive community on the Panhandle, to see the world not only through the opening in their roof, but also from their front windows.

Oxford, who heads his own Nashville architectural practice, designed the four-bedroom house in such a way that the pool area and oculus would function as the actual center of the residence, with visitors entering via a contemplative courtyard in which the pool is contained. But the most important aspects of the architecture, the elements that determined the very form the house assumed, were four tall palm trees. Oxford ingeniously positioned them on the site so that they are conspicuous from key points in the residence—notably from the master bedroom and at the entrance.

This story appeared in the Fall 2020 issue of MILIEU. To read the complete story or to see all photos, visit the MILIEU Newsstand to purchase this issue in print or visit Zinio.com to purchase this issue in digital format.  

INTERIOR DESIGN BY ROZANNE JACKSON

ARCHITECTURE BY GLEN OXFORD

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS LITTLE

WRITTEN BY DAVID MASELLO