While Curtis and Windham approached the pool-house pavilion (with the attached three-car garage) as a functional building, they also envisioned it as an "aesthetic object in the garden and a classic garden folly." Taking cues from the main house, they echoed architectural materials and details such as the Ionic columns, arched loggia, brick paving, and chinoiserie railing. "We wanted to elevate the architectural detailing slightly using the same gestures but in a more refined way," explains Curtis. "Often, folly buildings are more exalted and playful." Meanwhile, the compact and practical floor plan accommodates a kitchen, changing room, exercise room, and guest room.

A copper-clad rooftop cupola adds a decorative element "that is appropriate on top of a folly structure," says Windham. The two architects deftly tucked the attached garage into the back and side of the pool pavilion and suppressed the second-story dormer windows and roofline slightly so that they would not be visible from the pool-house façade. Lastly, old-fashioned carriage-house doors, Charleston-green trim, and beaded-board details, used for both the garage and the gate entrance, imbue the side approach with vernacular charm.

The owners treat the spacious covered loggia of the pool house as an outdoor living room that they can enjoy year-round -- whether for swimming breaks, garden parties, or alfresco Sunday dinners. Easy wicker furniture pieces and a colorful, large-scale mosaic propped like a painting over the sofa reinforce the living-room feel.

"We wanted to create a relationship that carried through the back lawn between the main house, the pavilion, and the pool," says Curtis. As a result, the elongated pool, framed through the arches of the main house and flanked on either end by a classic pavilion and elliptical garden, forms a perfectly symmetrical picture.