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138 Main Street
Apple Bank Building
Second Floor
Sag Harbor, NY 11963
(use for courier delivery)
P.O Box 510
Sag Harbor, NY 11963
(use for USPS delivery)
T 631.725.0229
F 631.725.0230
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.
Northwest Peach Farm
Lot size: 10 acres
Building size: 7000 sq. ft.
Location: East Hampton, NY
Program: Single Family Residence
Photographer: Michael Moran
Landscape Architect: Coen + Partners
This residence is primarily used when the clients’ extended family comes from England for long visits. They come to relax and to reconnect with their family and with nature, away from city crowds and traffic, at a retreat they neither want nor need to leave for a month. The design objective was to make every day of that month unique by providing a range of destinations within the site with diverse scales, functions, and views: from gathering in the expansive living room overlooking the fields of the former peach orchard to reading alone on a shaded bench between the library and the edge of the forest. Multiple paths and hallways connect each destination, further increasing variety. Finally, each detail and custom furnishing is designed to make mundane rituals into thoughtful events.
For example, in the kitchen, rolling cutting boards ride in tracks down the long island, turning meal preparation into an assembly line for everyone’s participation. Those not cooking can make a selection from the wine room where the bottles cast a pattern of shadows through a glazed wall into the main entrance. The dining table can be configured for the evening: stainless steel tubes running the length of the table can be rotated to reveal candleholders, flower
vase holders, or flat surfaces for hot dishes. At other times, the tubes can be removed and the trough filled with ice for chilling drinks. For a change of pace, there is dining on the roof deck at sunset, barbequing on the terrace, lunch in the shade of the pool house canopy, or breakfast in the screened porch. Each space is unique, making each meal special.
Even the morning routine becomes an event. In the kids’ rooms, a ribbon of stone traces their morning ritual. Starting as a nightstand by the bed, it becomes a bench for their pile of clothes, a desk for checking their email, a sink in the bathroom, and, finally, the shower floor. In the parents’ master closet, hidden steel hooks pivot up from the mahogany bench to hang the day’s outfit choices.
The clients wanted this to be a gathering place for their family, full of memories for generations to come. Thus the materials were chosen not only for durability but also for their gradual changes over many years. The copper siding and roofing will slowly turn green as the weathering limestone becomes darker. However, the window system will stand the test of time unchanged. An English company has manufactured the same industrial steel windows for over 150 years and many early examples are still in tact. A geothermal heating and cooling system, green roofs, organic finishes, and triple glazed windows will minimize the structure’s environmental impact over the generations.
The clients look forward to many tranquil summers together with their family in the house.
Northwest Peach Farm
Lot size: 10 acres
Building size: 7000 sq. ft.
Location: East Hampton, NY
Program: Single Family Residence
Photographer: Michael Moran
Landscape Architect: Coen + Partners
This residence is primarily used when the clients’ extended family comes from England for long visits. They come to relax and to reconnect with their family and with nature, away from city crowds and traffic, at a retreat they neither want nor need to leave for a month. The design objective was to make every day of that month unique by providing a range of destinations within the site with diverse scales, functions, and views: from gathering in the expansive living room overlooking the fields of the former peach orchard to reading alone on a shaded bench between the library and the edge of the forest. Multiple paths and hallways connect each destination, further increasing variety. Finally, each detail and custom furnishing is designed to make mundane rituals into thoughtful events.
For example, in the kitchen, rolling cutting boards ride in tracks down the long island, turning meal preparation into an assembly line for everyone’s participation. Those not cooking can make a selection from the wine room where the bottles cast a pattern of shadows through a glazed wall into the main entrance. The dining table can be configured for the evening: stainless steel tubes running the length of the table can be rotated to reveal candleholders, flower
vase holders, or flat surfaces for hot dishes. At other times, the tubes can be removed and the trough filled with ice for chilling drinks. For a change of pace, there is dining on the roof deck at sunset, barbequing on the terrace, lunch in the shade of the pool house canopy, or breakfast in the screened porch. Each space is unique, making each meal special.
Even the morning routine becomes an event. In the kids’ rooms, a ribbon of stone traces their morning ritual. Starting as a nightstand by the bed, it becomes a bench for their pile of clothes, a desk for checking their email, a sink in the bathroom, and, finally, the shower floor. In the parents’ master closet, hidden steel hooks pivot up from the mahogany bench to hang the day’s outfit choices.
The clients wanted this to be a gathering place for their family, full of memories for generations to come. Thus the materials were chosen not only for durability but also for their gradual changes over many years. The copper siding and roofing will slowly turn green as the weathering limestone becomes darker. However, the window system will stand the test of time unchanged. An English company has manufactured the same industrial steel windows for over 150 years and many early examples are still in tact. A geothermal heating and cooling system, green roofs, organic finishes, and triple glazed windows will minimize the structure’s environmental impact over the generations.
The clients look forward to many tranquil summers together with their family in the house.
Re-cover
Lot size: 0.5 acres
Building size: 1,500 sq. ft.
Location: Amagansett, New York
Program: Single Family Residence
Photographer: Christopher Wesnofske
Contractor: Paul Cassidy
Thirty-five years after the firm originally designed this vacation residence, its new owners sought to rejuvenate the house while preserving its spaces, seasoned tones, and texture. Clad inside and out almost entirely in twelve-inch wide cypress boards, the original house exuded a straightforward simplicity the owners wished to maintain. By constraining the palette of materials and reusing salvaged parts of the existing house, the line between new and old becomes nearly imperceptible, limited only to minimal inflections in finish.
In the enlarged and updated baths, and in the modernized kitchen and dining terrace, a dense glacial sedimentary sandstone is used for its fine workability into a variety of finishes. In this way the stone varies subtly – only in texture – as it is reapplied from one surface to another: horizontal walking surfaces are rendered with a smooth honed finish, vertical wall surfaces with a rough flamed finish, and countertops in a glossy polished finish. This tactile language is traced consistently from room to room.
Little of the material seen in the addition is in fact new. As the south wall and deck of the house were dismantled to make room for the new construction, the cypress boards and cedar decking were carefully
salvaged and machined into new siding, fine scrim material, stair treads and risers. Reused, this cladding bears precisely the same patina as the other surfaces in the house – an effect truly impossible to achieve with new construction materials. Only on close inspection is new texture and color revealed at the boards’ freshly cut edges.
In enhancing the simplicity of the original design, a subtle complexity has emerged. Splices, cuts, and finishing techniques inflect upon otherwise homogenous materials, recording the methods of craft and workmanship. Over the next thirty-five years the patina that naturally accrues over time will continue refine the delicacy of these inflections.
Northwest Landing
Lot size: 0.51 acres
Building size: 1,895 sq. ft.
Location: East Hampton, NY
Program: Single Family Residence
Straddling freshwater wetlands and a tidal estuary at just six feet above sea level, this house’s site demands extraordinary sensitivity to environmental concerns. Local zoning restricts the structure’s maximum coverage and encroachment on the wetlands areas, while FEMA requirements set the first floor structure above the base flood elevation. The house’s basic massing is therefore predetermined, limited to a one story, 1,900 square foot design in 4:7 proportion, raised eight feet above the ground. The spaces within this envelope are arranged, articulated, and fenestrated with an innovative structural system that infuses the house’s inner areas with light and circulating air.
Whereas most waterfront construction uses pilings to establish an artificial ground plane upon which a conventional house is built, in this project these structural members are integral: 16 wide, exposed, glue-laminated piles stake out the enclosing walls for each of the three bedrooms and extend continuously from the ground through the roof. The residual spaces between these piles house “utility” functions: closet, desk, laundry, pantry, and shower compartment. In addition to these conventional utilities, three vertical voids are opened between the piles to serve the spaces around them. Without occupying any of the limited allowed coverage these open areas add considerable value by improving the
house’s interior environmental quality and diminishing its impact on the local environment. The benefit is threefold: each opening draws light though the interior spaces to the carport below, conducts rainwater from the roof deck to a rainwater management system, and ventilates by siphoning air through the middle of the structure.
At the roof the projecting piles serve to divide the space between a deck directly coinciding with the living areas below and a modular planting system installed directly above each bedroom. This planting system further minimizes the structure’s footprint and environmental impact. At the ground level directly underneath the main living spaces, there is room for storing the cars, boats, and yard equipment usually found under houses raised on pilings.
By allowing these voids to permeate through the house, the owners have multiple visual connections to the landscape from below, within and above the house, encouraging a sense of place.
Northwest Landing
Lot size: 0.51 acres
Building size: 1,895 sq. ft.
Location: East Hampton, NY
Program: Single Family Residence
Straddling freshwater wetlands and a tidal estuary at just six feet above sea level, this house’s site demands extraordinary sensitivity to environmental concerns. Local zoning restricts the structure’s maximum coverage and encroachment on the wetlands areas, while FEMA requirements set the first floor structure above the base flood elevation. The house’s basic massing is therefore predetermined, limited to a one story, 1,900 square foot design in 4:7 proportion, raised eight feet above the ground. The spaces within this envelope are arranged, articulated, and fenestrated with an innovative structural system that infuses the house’s inner areas with light and circulating air.
Whereas most waterfront construction uses pilings to establish an artificial ground plane upon which a conventional house is built, in this project these structural members are integral: 16 wide, exposed, glue-laminated piles stake out the enclosing walls for each of the three bedrooms and extend continuously from the ground through the roof. The residual spaces between these piles house “utility” functions: closet, desk, laundry, pantry, and shower compartment. In addition to these conventional utilities, three vertical voids are opened between the piles to serve the spaces around them. Without occupying any of the limited allowed coverage these open areas add considerable value by improving the
house’s interior environmental quality and diminishing its impact on the local environment. The benefit is threefold: each opening draws light though the interior spaces to the carport below, conducts rainwater from the roof deck to a rainwater management system, and ventilates by siphoning air through the middle of the structure.
At the roof the projecting piles serve to divide the space between a deck directly coinciding with the living areas below and a modular planting system installed directly above each bedroom. This planting system further minimizes the structure’s footprint and environmental impact. At the ground level directly underneath the main living spaces, there is room for storing the cars, boats, and yard equipment usually found under houses raised on pilings.
By allowing these voids to permeate through the house, the owners have multiple visual connections to the landscape from below, within and above the house, encouraging a sense of place.
Northwest Landing
Lot size: 0.51 acres
Building size: 1,895 sq. ft.
Location: East Hampton, NY
Program: Single Family Residence
Straddling freshwater wetlands and a tidal estuary at just six feet above sea level, this house’s site demands extraordinary sensitivity to environmental concerns. Local zoning restricts the structure’s maximum coverage and encroachment on the wetlands areas, while FEMA requirements set the first floor structure above the base flood elevation. The house’s basic massing is therefore predetermined, limited to a one story, 1,900 square foot design in 4:7 proportion, raised eight feet above the ground. The spaces within this envelope are arranged, articulated, and fenestrated with an innovative structural system that infuses the house’s inner areas with light and circulating air.
Whereas most waterfront construction uses pilings to establish an artificial ground plane upon which a conventional house is built, in this project these structural members are integral: 16 wide, exposed, glue-laminated piles stake out the enclosing walls for each of the three bedrooms and extend continuously from the ground through the roof. The residual spaces between these piles house “utility” functions: closet, desk, laundry, pantry, and shower compartment. In addition to these conventional utilities, three vertical voids are opened between the piles to serve the spaces around them. Without occupying any of the limited allowed coverage these open areas add considerable value by improving the
house’s interior environmental quality and diminishing its impact on the local environment. The benefit is threefold: each opening draws light though the interior spaces to the carport below, conducts rainwater from the roof deck to a rainwater management system, and ventilates by siphoning air through the middle of the structure.
At the roof the projecting piles serve to divide the space between a deck directly coinciding with the living areas below and a modular planting system installed directly above each bedroom. This planting system further minimizes the structure’s footprint and environmental impact. At the ground level directly underneath the main living spaces, there is room for storing the cars, boats, and yard equipment usually found under houses raised on pilings.
By allowing these voids to permeate through the house, the owners have multiple visual connections to the landscape from below, within and above the house, encouraging a sense of place.
Northwest Landing
Lot size: 0.51 acres
Building size: 1,895 sq. ft.
Location: East Hampton, NY
Program: Single Family Residence
Straddling freshwater wetlands and a tidal estuary at just six feet above sea level, this house’s site demands extraordinary sensitivity to environmental concerns. Local zoning restricts the structure’s maximum coverage and encroachment on the wetlands areas, while FEMA requirements set the first floor structure above the base flood elevation. The house’s basic massing is therefore predetermined, limited to a one story, 1,900 square foot design in 4:7 proportion, raised eight feet above the ground. The spaces within this envelope are arranged, articulated, and fenestrated with an innovative structural system that infuses the house’s inner areas with light and circulating air.
Whereas most waterfront construction uses pilings to establish an artificial ground plane upon which a conventional house is built, in this project these structural members are integral: 16 wide, exposed, glue-laminated piles stake out the enclosing walls for each of the three bedrooms and extend continuously from the ground through the roof. The residual spaces between these piles house “utility” functions: closet, desk, laundry, pantry, and shower compartment. In addition to these conventional utilities, three vertical voids are opened between the piles to serve the spaces around them. Without occupying any of the limited allowed coverage these open areas add considerable value by improving the
house’s interior environmental quality and diminishing its impact on the local environment. The benefit is threefold: each opening draws light though the interior spaces to the carport below, conducts rainwater from the roof deck to a rainwater management system, and ventilates by siphoning air through the middle of the structure.
At the roof the projecting piles serve to divide the space between a deck directly coinciding with the living areas below and a modular planting system installed directly above each bedroom. This planting system further minimizes the structure’s footprint and environmental impact. At the ground level directly underneath the main living spaces, there is room for storing the cars, boats, and yard equipment usually found under houses raised on pilings.
By allowing these voids to permeate through the house, the owners have multiple visual connections to the landscape from below, within and above the house, encouraging a sense of place.
Silver Hollow
Lot size: 159 acres
Building size: 2,100 sq. ft.
Location: Chichester, NY
Program: Single Family Residence
The problems of accessing an isolated 160 acres in New York’s Catskill Park necessitated materials and building techniques that ultimately set the design platform for a young Manhattan couple’s weekend retreat. The required access road traverses a stream on a new timber bridge protected from seasonal flooding by locally quarried riprap embankments. Beyond, the road cuts into a thickly forested hemlock-covered north-facing mountainside, opening a narrow corridor to distant views and ushering light into the woods’ shadows.
Set on a plateau of dense woodland above Silver Hollow and cradled by mountains to the east, south and west, the building site’s want for daylight and vistas is reconciled by reiterating the road-building process. An aperture opens to sunset views in the west and ambient sky light above by cutting a narrow swath through the trees just wide enough for the foundations’ excavation and far enough down slope to clear the tree canopy. The house interfaces this aperture through expansive glass sliding doors at each end, and by siphoning sky light from the roof deck to the ground level. In conventional structures “solar tubes” carry sky light through rooftop acrylic diffusers and reflect it through specular aluminum ducts to the lower stories. In Silver Hollow, the entire house becomes a “solar tube”.
By employing a system of deep timber beams spaced six feet apart, the floor framing no longer depends directly on the exterior walls for support. The solid floor and ceiling may be held-back at the edges to open an uninterrupted cavity from the first floor through the roof. This cavity is lined with white reflective metal road sign blanks and made translucent to the sky and interior spaces through a diffusive plane of clear corrugated polycarbonate. Light reflects off the roof deck’s metal planking, through the polycarbonate plane into the light cavity, off the road sign blanks, and into the house’s interior spaces.
Traditionally development in Catskill Park has taken place adjacent to waterways and existing transportation corridors. Since this project sits inside a relatively undisturbed tract, special environmental care is taken. Moss-coated boulders strewn across the hillside are piled like riprap against the graded slopes to either side of the parking area to protect against erosion; hemlocks cleared for the road and building site are recycled into siding at a local mill; and the light cavities double for natural convective cooling in the summertime: cool air draws below, warms by solar radiation, rises to the top, and exhausts through manually-regulated louvers. Along with the “solar tube” daylighting, these systems unite harmoniously with the natural setting to satisfy the owners’ aspirations for “simplicity, functionality, warmth, and soul”.
Silver Hollow
Lot size: 159 acres
Building size: 2,100 sq. ft.
Location: Chichester, NY
Program: Single Family Residence
The problems of accessing an isolated 160 acres in New York’s Catskill Park necessitated materials and building techniques that ultimately set the design platform for a young Manhattan couple’s weekend retreat. The required access road traverses a stream on a new timber bridge protected from seasonal flooding by locally quarried riprap embankments. Beyond, the road cuts into a thickly forested hemlock-covered north-facing mountainside, opening a narrow corridor to distant views and ushering light into the woods’ shadows.
Set on a plateau of dense woodland above Silver Hollow and cradled by mountains to the east, south and west, the building site’s want for daylight and vistas is reconciled by reiterating the road-building process. An aperture opens to sunset views in the west and ambient sky light above by cutting a narrow swath through the trees just wide enough for the foundations’ excavation and far enough down slope to clear the tree canopy. The house interfaces this aperture through expansive glass sliding doors at each end, and by siphoning sky light from the roof deck to the ground level. In conventional structures “solar tubes” carry sky light through rooftop acrylic diffusers and reflect it through specular aluminum ducts to the lower stories. In Silver Hollow, the entire house becomes a “solar tube”.
By employing a system of deep timber beams spaced six feet apart, the floor framing no longer depends directly on the exterior walls for support. The solid floor and ceiling may be held-back at the edges to open an uninterrupted cavity from the first floor through the roof. This cavity is lined with white reflective metal road sign blanks and made translucent to the sky and interior spaces through a diffusive plane of clear corrugated polycarbonate. Light reflects off the roof deck’s metal planking, through the polycarbonate plane into the light cavity, off the road sign blanks, and into the house’s interior spaces.
Traditionally development in Catskill Park has taken place adjacent to waterways and existing transportation corridors. Since this project sits inside a relatively undisturbed tract, special environmental care is taken. Moss-coated boulders strewn across the hillside are piled like riprap against the graded slopes to either side of the parking area to protect against erosion; hemlocks cleared for the road and building site are recycled into siding at a local mill; and the light cavities double for natural convective cooling in the summertime: cool air draws below, warms by solar radiation, rises to the top, and exhausts through manually-regulated louvers. Along with the “solar tube” daylighting, these systems unite harmoniously with the natural setting to satisfy the owners’ aspirations for “simplicity, functionality, warmth, and soul”.
Silver Hollow
Lot size: 159 acres
Building size: 2,100 sq. ft.
Location: Chichester, NY
Program: Single Family Residence
The problems of accessing an isolated 160 acres in New York’s Catskill Park necessitated materials and building techniques that ultimately set the design platform for a young Manhattan couple’s weekend retreat. The required access road traverses a stream on a new timber bridge protected from seasonal flooding by locally quarried riprap embankments. Beyond, the road cuts into a thickly forested hemlock-covered north-facing mountainside, opening a narrow corridor to distant views and ushering light into the woods’ shadows.
Set on a plateau of dense woodland above Silver Hollow and cradled by mountains to the east, south and west, the building site’s want for daylight and vistas is reconciled by reiterating the road-building process. An aperture opens to sunset views in the west and ambient sky light above by cutting a narrow swath through the trees just wide enough for the foundations’ excavation and far enough down slope to clear the tree canopy. The house interfaces this aperture through expansive glass sliding doors at each end, and by siphoning sky light from the roof deck to the ground level. In conventional structures “solar tubes” carry sky light through rooftop acrylic diffusers and reflect it through specular aluminum ducts to the lower stories. In Silver Hollow, the entire house becomes a “solar tube”.
By employing a system of deep timber beams spaced six feet apart, the floor framing no longer depends directly on the exterior walls for support. The solid floor and ceiling may be held-back at the edges to open an uninterrupted cavity from the first floor through the roof. This cavity is lined with white reflective metal road sign blanks and made translucent to the sky and interior spaces through a diffusive plane of clear corrugated polycarbonate. Light reflects off the roof deck’s metal planking, through the polycarbonate plane into the light cavity, off the road sign blanks, and into the house’s interior spaces.
Traditionally development in Catskill Park has taken place adjacent to waterways and existing transportation corridors. Since this project sits inside a relatively undisturbed tract, special environmental care is taken. Moss-coated boulders strewn across the hillside are piled like riprap against the graded slopes to either side of the parking area to protect against erosion; hemlocks cleared for the road and building site are recycled into siding at a local mill; and the light cavities double for natural convective cooling in the summertime: cool air draws below, warms by solar radiation, rises to the top, and exhausts through manually-regulated louvers. Along with the “solar tube” daylighting, these systems unite harmoniously with the natural setting to satisfy the owners’ aspirations for “simplicity, functionality, warmth, and soul”.
Silver Hollow
Lot size: 159 acres
Building size: 2,100 sq. ft.
Location: Chichester, NY
Program: Single Family Residence
The problems of accessing an isolated 160 acres in New York’s Catskill Park necessitated materials and building techniques that ultimately set the design platform for a young Manhattan couple’s weekend retreat. The required access road traverses a stream on a new timber bridge protected from seasonal flooding by locally quarried riprap embankments. Beyond, the road cuts into a thickly forested hemlock-covered north-facing mountainside, opening a narrow corridor to distant views and ushering light into the woods’ shadows.
Set on a plateau of dense woodland above Silver Hollow and cradled by mountains to the east, south and west, the building site’s want for daylight and vistas is reconciled by reiterating the road-building process. An aperture opens to sunset views in the west and ambient sky light above by cutting a narrow swath through the trees just wide enough for the foundations’ excavation and far enough down slope to clear the tree canopy. The house interfaces this aperture through expansive glass sliding doors at each end, and by siphoning sky light from the roof deck to the ground level. In conventional structures “solar tubes” carry sky light through rooftop acrylic diffusers and reflect it through specular aluminum ducts to the lower stories. In Silver Hollow, the entire house becomes a “solar tube”.
By employing a system of deep timber beams spaced six feet apart, the floor framing no longer depends directly on the exterior walls for support. The solid floor and ceiling may be held-back at the edges to open an uninterrupted cavity from the first floor through the roof. This cavity is lined with white reflective metal road sign blanks and made translucent to the sky and interior spaces through a diffusive plane of clear corrugated polycarbonate. Light reflects off the roof deck’s metal planking, through the polycarbonate plane into the light cavity, off the road sign blanks, and into the house’s interior spaces.
Traditionally development in Catskill Park has taken place adjacent to waterways and existing transportation corridors. Since this project sits inside a relatively undisturbed tract, special environmental care is taken. Moss-coated boulders strewn across the hillside are piled like riprap against the graded slopes to either side of the parking area to protect against erosion; hemlocks cleared for the road and building site are recycled into siding at a local mill; and the light cavities double for natural convective cooling in the summertime: cool air draws below, warms by solar radiation, rises to the top, and exhausts through manually-regulated louvers. Along with the “solar tube” daylighting, these systems unite harmoniously with the natural setting to satisfy the owners’ aspirations for “simplicity, functionality, warmth, and soul”.
Silver Hollow
Lot size: 159 acres
Building size: 2,100 sq. ft.
Location: Chichester, NY
Program: Single Family Residence
The problems of accessing an isolated 160 acres in New York’s Catskill Park necessitated materials and building techniques that ultimately set the design platform for a young Manhattan couple’s weekend retreat. The required access road traverses a stream on a new timber bridge protected from seasonal flooding by locally quarried riprap embankments. Beyond, the road cuts into a thickly forested hemlock-covered north-facing mountainside, opening a narrow corridor to distant views and ushering light into the woods’ shadows.
Set on a plateau of dense woodland above Silver Hollow and cradled by mountains to the east, south and west, the building site’s want for daylight and vistas is reconciled by reiterating the road-building process. An aperture opens to sunset views in the west and ambient sky light above by cutting a narrow swath through the trees just wide enough for the foundations’ excavation and far enough down slope to clear the tree canopy. The house interfaces this aperture through expansive glass sliding doors at each end, and by siphoning sky light from the roof deck to the ground level. In conventional structures “solar tubes” carry sky light through rooftop acrylic diffusers and reflect it through specular aluminum ducts to the lower stories. In Silver Hollow, the entire house becomes a “solar tube”.
By employing a system of deep timber beams spaced six feet apart, the floor framing no longer depends directly on the exterior walls for support. The solid floor and ceiling may be held-back at the edges to open an uninterrupted cavity from the first floor through the roof. This cavity is lined with white reflective metal road sign blanks and made translucent to the sky and interior spaces through a diffusive plane of clear corrugated polycarbonate. Light reflects off the roof deck’s metal planking, through the polycarbonate plane into the light cavity, off the road sign blanks, and into the house’s interior spaces.
Traditionally development in Catskill Park has taken place adjacent to waterways and existing transportation corridors. Since this project sits inside a relatively undisturbed tract, special environmental care is taken. Moss-coated boulders strewn across the hillside are piled like riprap against the graded slopes to either side of the parking area to protect against erosion; hemlocks cleared for the road and building site are recycled into siding at a local mill; and the light cavities double for natural convective cooling in the summertime: cool air draws below, warms by solar radiation, rises to the top, and exhausts through manually-regulated louvers. Along with the “solar tube” daylighting, these systems unite harmoniously with the natural setting to satisfy the owners’ aspirations for “simplicity, functionality, warmth, and soul”.
Lindal Architects Collaborative
Building size: Customizable sq. ft.
Location: Worldwide
Program: Single Family Residence
Contractor: Lindal Cedar Homes
Project Narrative Forthcoming
Lindal Architects Collaborative
Building size: Customizable sq. ft.
Location: Worldwide
Program: Single Family Residence
Contractor: Lindal Cedar Homes
Project Narrative Forthcoming
Lindal Architects Collaborative
Building size: Customizable sq. ft.
Location: Worldwide
Program: Single Family Residence
Contractor: Lindal Cedar Homes
Project Narrative Forthcoming
Lindal Architects Collaborative
Building size: Customizable sq. ft.
Location: Worldwide
Program: Single Family Residence
Contractor: Lindal Cedar Homes
Project Narrative Forthcoming
Lindal Architects Collaborative
Building size: Customizable sq. ft.
Location: Worldwide
Program: Single Family Residence
Contractor: Lindal Cedar Homes
Project Narrative Forthcoming
Northwest Landing
Lot size: 0.51 acres
Building size: 1,895 sq. ft.
Location: East Hampton, NY
Program: Single Family Residence
Straddling freshwater wetlands and a tidal estuary at just six feet above sea level, this house’s site demands extraordinary sensitivity to environmental concerns. Local zoning restricts the structure’s maximum coverage and encroachment on the wetlands areas, while FEMA requirements set the first floor structure above the base flood elevation. The house’s basic massing is therefore predetermined, limited to a one story, 1,900 square foot design in 4:7 proportion, raised eight feet above the ground. The spaces within this envelope are arranged, articulated, and fenestrated with an innovative structural system that infuses the house’s inner areas with light and circulating air.
Whereas most waterfront construction uses pilings to establish an artificial ground plane upon which a conventional house is built, in this project these structural members are integral: 16 wide, exposed, glue-laminated piles stake out the enclosing walls for each of the three bedrooms and extend continuously from the ground through the roof. The residual spaces between these piles house “utility” functions: closet, desk, laundry, pantry, and shower compartment. In addition to these conventional utilities, three vertical voids are opened between the piles to serve the spaces around them. Without occupying any of the limited allowed coverage these open areas add considerable value by improving the
house’s interior environmental quality and diminishing its impact on the local environment. The benefit is threefold: each opening draws light though the interior spaces to the carport below, conducts rainwater from the roof deck to a rainwater management system, and ventilates by siphoning air through the middle of the structure.
At the roof the projecting piles serve to divide the space between a deck directly coinciding with the living areas below and a modular planting system installed directly above each bedroom. This planting system further minimizes the structure’s footprint and environmental impact. At the ground level directly underneath the main living spaces, there is room for storing the cars, boats, and yard equipment usually found under houses raised on pilings.
By allowing these voids to permeate through the house, the owners have multiple visual connections to the landscape from below, within and above the house, encouraging a sense of place.
Northwest Landing
Lot size: 0.51 acres
Building size: 1,895 sq. ft.
Location: East Hampton, NY
Program: Single Family Residence
Straddling freshwater wetlands and a tidal estuary at just six feet above sea level, this house’s site demands extraordinary sensitivity to environmental concerns. Local zoning restricts the structure’s maximum coverage and encroachment on the wetlands areas, while FEMA requirements set the first floor structure above the base flood elevation. The house’s basic massing is therefore predetermined, limited to a one story, 1,900 square foot design in 4:7 proportion, raised eight feet above the ground. The spaces within this envelope are arranged, articulated, and fenestrated with an innovative structural system that infuses the house’s inner areas with light and circulating air.
Whereas most waterfront construction uses pilings to establish an artificial ground plane upon which a conventional house is built, in this project these structural members are integral: 16 wide, exposed, glue-laminated piles stake out the enclosing walls for each of the three bedrooms and extend continuously from the ground through the roof. The residual spaces between these piles house “utility” functions: closet, desk, laundry, pantry, and shower compartment. In addition to these conventional utilities, three vertical voids are opened between the piles to serve the spaces around them. Without occupying any of the limited allowed coverage these open areas add considerable value by improving the
house’s interior environmental quality and diminishing its impact on the local environment. The benefit is threefold: each opening draws light though the interior spaces to the carport below, conducts rainwater from the roof deck to a rainwater management system, and ventilates by siphoning air through the middle of the structure.
At the roof the projecting piles serve to divide the space between a deck directly coinciding with the living areas below and a modular planting system installed directly above each bedroom. This planting system further minimizes the structure’s footprint and environmental impact. At the ground level directly underneath the main living spaces, there is room for storing the cars, boats, and yard equipment usually found under houses raised on pilings.
By allowing these voids to permeate through the house, the owners have multiple visual connections to the landscape from below, within and above the house, encouraging a sense of place.
Hither Hills
Lot size: .35 acres
Building size: 3,300 sq. ft.
Location: Montauk, NY
Program: Single Family Residence
Project Narrative Forthcoming
Underhill
Lot size: 3 acres
Building size: 6,800 sq. ft.
Location: Matinecock, NY
Program: Single Family Residence
Project Narrative Forthcoming
Underhill
Lot size: 3 acres
Building size: 6,800 sq. ft.
Location: Matinecock, NY
Program: Single Family Residence
Project Narrative Forthcoming
Underhill
Lot size: 3 acres
Building size: 6,800 sq. ft.
Location: Matinecock, NY
Program: Single Family Residence
Project Narrative Forthcoming