Having spent the summer of 2006 on this small Sag Harbor cove, the owners enjoyed both the low key atmosphere of the community and it’s seclusion from the intensity of the ‘Hamptons summer’, while still being able to walk into the heart of town for dinner or a movie.  When a small lot became available, they decided to make this neighborhood their permanent home.  

The 1/3 of an acre site included a number of restrictions:  2 front yard setbacks, wetlands, a fourteen foot change in grade and a flood zone elevation that diagonally bisects the lot resulting in a maximum, buildable footprint of 1,500 square feet.  

The plan of the house consists of two distinct masses separated by a double height glazed entry slot approached by a casual boardwalk that continues on axis to the soon to be built dock.  The eastern section of the house contains an open plan living room, dining room and kitchen with the daughter’s and guest bedrooms and laundry above, while a music room and screened in porch on the first floor and master suite on the second, occupy the western portion.

Both volumes are simple, shed roofs, clad in black stained, V-grooved cedar.  Windows and doors on the street and two side yards are treated as simple ‘cuts’ in a taught skin.  Inspired by the site’s sloping topography (a rare condition in the Hamptons, which is known much more for the long horizons of the farm fields) and the mature, distinctively unmanicured trees, the waterside elevations are organized within lightly stained, cedar ‘timbers’.  This device organizes multiple compositions of solid/void and windows/doors while accentuating the verticality of the building mass.  Steel troweled, natural stucco completes the exterior palette as well as reappearing on key interior elements. 

Photography by Marc Bryan Brown