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Profile

Bates Masi + Architects LLC, a full-service architectural firm with roots in New York City and the East End of Long Island for over 45 years, responds to each project with extensive research in related architectural fields, material, craft and environment for unique solutions as varied as the individuals or groups for whom they are designed. The focus is neither the size nor the type of project but the opportunity to enrich lives and enhance the environment. The attention to all elements of design has been a constant in the firm’s philosophy. Projects include urban and suburban residences, schools, offices, hotels, restaurants, retail and furniture in the United States, Central America and the Caribbean. The firm has received 43 design awards since 2003 and has been featured in national and international publications including The New York Times, New York Magazine, Architectural Digest, Architectural Record, Metropolitan Home, and Dwell. Residential Architect Magazine selected Bates Masi one of their 50 Architect’s We Love. A gallery exhibition in May 2010 featured the firm’s earlier work from 1960-70.

 

Paul Masi spent childhood summers in Montauk and currently resides in Amagansett. He received a Bachelor of Architecture from Catholic University and a Masters of Architecture from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. He worked at Richard Meier & Partners before joining this firm in 1998.

Harry Bates, a resident of East Hampton, received a Bachelor of Architecture from North Carolina State University. After ten years with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, he was in private practice in New York City for 17 years before moving the firm to Southampton on the East End in 1980. Our offices are currently located in Sag Harbor with plans to relocate to a new LEED Certified office building of our own design in East Hampton.

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Roaman

Lot size: 0.43 acres

Building size: 3,450 sq. ft.

Location: Amagansett, NY

Program: Single Family Residence

Photographer: Christopher Wesnofske

Contractor: A Harry&Sally Doghouse

A young couple with a growing family sought to redevelop property on a street of small cottages on narrow half-acre plots, requesting a proposal that could accommodate their space needs, reflect their interests and personalities, and integrate sensitively into the neighborhood. The consummate design for this photographer-naturalist duo combines highly efficient interior and exterior space organization with a dynamic articulation of materials in an architectural vocabulary at once freshly modern and deferential to its neighbors.

The main house and detached woodshop are formed and configured to collect and define discreet areas for outside activities such as guest reception, fireside entertaining, dining, swimming, and lawn sports. Articulating these zones and tailoring each to its intended purpose maximizes the yard’s utility. Extending the facades of the house and woodshop as freestanding walls furnishes each outdoor space with privacy, and tucking other spaces beneath the second story affords shelter from the elements. Ultimately, the small site’s potential is fully realized while maintaining a sense of liberal space through order.

While the house’s cantilevered second story resonates with the other homes on the street in its simple gabled structure and traditional clapboard siding, the ground level is wrapped in a unique custom-milled rainscreen siding. The top edge of each board is beveled subtly at different angles to render varying degrees of shadow and permit various amounts of transparency across the facade. As the sun moves across the sky throughout the day, high to low through the seasons, and crisp to diffuse through atmospheric changes, so too will the house’s surfaces and spaces beyond change dramatically over time. In this way a photo-graphic (light-drawing) technique is activated by changes in the natural environment, uniting the clients’ interests and lifestyle in their home and site.

Amplification of the play of light on the built structure is pursued further inside the house. Above the living room a half-butterfly roof diffuses southern sunlight through a frosted glass clerestory and reflects it deep into the dining area. At the stairwell a dormer nestled in the gabled roof lights the tall column of space from three stories above. And in the master bedroom light entering through the gable-end clerestory filters through a ceiling of the custom-milled siding.

Ultimately, the house not only serves the basic needs of its residents, but also acts as a work of kinetic sculpture, an art piece that enriches their daily lives.

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