In the Hamptons, size does matter. But the owners of this Amagansett residence wanted a house just large enough for their family—and one that responded to its site amid rolling dunes.
The result: “a regional architecture based not on style, but on environmental factors,” says principal Paul Masi, who incorporated sculptural, yet functional louvered windows that accommodate cross breezes while regulating sunlight.
The panel used such adjectives as “striking,” “elegant,” and “beautiful” to describe the project’s façade, which judge Aerin Lauder likens to a backgammon set.
An open and airy floor plan takes advantage of all the natural light.
Tradition takes on new meaning at this Southampton home. From the outside, two gable-roofed structures form an L shape, which cradles a modernist glass box.
Rooms contained within the L portion are classically proportioned, while those in the more modern wing assume an open plan. Blaze Makoid expertly melded traditional forms with novel ones, right down to the interior moldings. Judge Russell Groves sums up the architecture as “sharp, with pleasing proportions and a contrast of materials.”
In addition to the obvious natural attractions of the ocean and dunes, one of the most conspicuous landmarks in Westhampton is the Double Diamond house, which was designed by Andrew Geller in 1959. By the time CookFox Architects began its restoration, redesign, and reorientation, the house had devolved to near collapse. The architects set the diamond-shaped components on new stilts, added a courtyard, and built a boardwalk and pool. Newly revived, the house is once again “a dynamic, sculptural element in the landscape,” says judge Ron Wendt.
Barnes Coy refers to its positioning of this East Quogue residence on a dune as “the most intimate relationship with the beach possible.” Indeed, the house, which Lauder characterizes as “soft and fluid,” references the kind of mid-20th-century modern design that once defined the Hamptons. Essentially, the structure assumes two shapes that work in perfect harmony: a two-story cylinder joined with a rectilinear box.
