House

The owner of this home near the ocean on the East End of Long island requested that we incorporate the existing house into a new, larger design. We did this by adding a series of new forms linked together by a column-free great room with 16-foot wide pocketing glass doors. A wooden V-shape ceiling visually extends the living room out to the garden and swimming pool. The guest rooms are housed in a 32-foot high tower with the roof deck that provides views of the ocean and the surrounding fields.

We used cedar throughout the house: first as exterior siding; again in striated, block relief as cladding on the chimney both inside and out; and finally as a lattice screen on the guest wing tower to subtly conceal the exterior stair to the roof deck.

Situated on a beautiful hillside in New York’s Catskills Mountains, this project included a complete re-design of an existing house with only the footprint and roofline remaining.

The interior transformation yielded a vast, open kitchen, dining and living space with 20-foot ceilings and exterior views from end to end. The dining area looks onto a large cedar deck, with steps down to a planned pool area. The open kitchen features thick walnut shelving and walnut counters; salvaged barn board siding wraps around the island.

The entrance vestibule provides a view through the house and out onto the “bridge” deck that extends from the master bedroom. Spacious exterior decks around the house take advantage of the mountain vistas across the valley below. The white-washed cement board exterior siding is installed as a rain-screen to allow for continuous insulation and weather proofing. The extensive, sloping property includes beautiful drystone walls and a lower pond with a small bathing house.

This four-bedroom ocean-front house is built around an eighteenth-century Vermont barn frame that was salvaged, restored and re-erected to create the great room with living, dining, and kitchen. A glass and aluminum curtain wall floods the entire east end of the barn with morning light.

The barn and the “addition,” which contains ground-floor bedrooms and a second-floor master bedroom suite, are sited on the property to maximize privacy from the neighbors. Simple materials throughout include clear finished maple cabinetry, American cherry floors, natural aluminum window mullions, and a steel fireplace.

Our client Jay Chiat said to The New York Times Magazine, “I’ve had a lot of nice houses, but this is the first one I feel is really home.”

This project, on a 750-acre farm an hour outside of Nashville, includes the complete renovation of the circa 1850s farmhouse, a 4,800 sq. ft. addition, and a new guest house/garage.

The original farmhouse (6,500 sq. ft.) stands at the end of a long drive. By carefully siting the addition and guest house, we preserved the understated, bucolic feeling of the approach, while doubling the home’s living space. A rear courtyard bounded by the original house and the two-story addition adds to a feeling of intimacy. The addition includes a large eat-in kitchen and screened porch, and a summer master bedroom with sleeping porch. A small guest house with a below-grade garage stands to the north.

Our client’s commitment to sustainable design informed every aspect of the project. All wood from accessory buildings was reclaimed and used as millwork for the restoration and addition. We stripped and retained all of the house’s original siding detail. The heating and AC system is geothermal and the lighting is LED. We sited the addition to maximize passive solar in the winter and placed windows to encourage cross ventilation in the summer. We worked with the landscape architect to ensure that the new trees on the property provide shade, including a copse of trees to the south of the new kitchen that creates an outdoor dining room.