Issue 3 by END magazine

3 Designing for Dirtbag Beach King Charles (Gwathmey) Retail Apocalypse East End Design Awards: Winners Revealed

A magazine with The East Hampton Star

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A NEW ERA Publisher & Editor-in-Chief Levi Shaw-Faber Senior Editor Bess Rattray Design PLAYLAB, INC. Contributors Lang Phipps, Nina Channing, William Jess Laird Copy Editor Julia Hart End is printed on Forest Stewardship Council certified paper made with 10-percent-recycled material.

The East End of Long Island holds a special place in architectural history. Lured by soft light, ocean views, and cheap land, early Modernists flocked here to build experimental “machines for living in,” as Le Corbusier would say. Projects like Peter Blake’s 1954 Pinwheel House, Andrew Geller’s 1959 Double Diamond, and the house Charles Gwathmey designed for his parents in 1968 (see page 24) are discussed in Modern Architectural History 101 classes nationwide. But in the waning decades of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st, East End architecture largely lost its way. A few good architects continued to build interesting houses, but the rise of the shingle-style McMansion overshadowed their work. “Hamptons” houses started to be seen as investment properties, rather than as places for family fun, and clients stopped taking risks. But one of the reasons why I started this magazine is because I believe that we are in a new era of East End experimental architecture. The entries in the first two Design Awards competitions pushed

the boundaries of residential landscape, interior, and architectural design. Projects like the Black House from Oza Sabbeth, a post-war ranch clad in a futuristic skin made of 80 percent post-consumer waste rubber, and the His/Hers Art Studio by TBD Architecture and Design Studio, which is made with a steel frame and a translucent polycarbonate curtain wall, take risks with both their design and their material palette. And there’s one somewhat secret house by Diller Scofidio Renfro on Two Mile Hollow Beach that, whether you like it or not, is breaking ground in a way that the South Fork has not seen since, maybe, Gwathmey in 1968. Here at End, we think that the second decade of the 21st century — and, we hope, the third — will be remembered as a great time in architecture. Levi Shaw-Faber Publisher & Editor-In-Chief levi@eastenddesignawards.com

Black House in Sagaponack, by Oza Sabbeth Architects. Photo by Attic Fire

For advertising, please email levi@eastenddesignawards.com On the Cover The 600-square-foot Beach Hampton house designed by Bates Masi + Architects. (See page 36.) Photo Courtesy of Bates Masi + Architects.

10%

CHAIR

Best Seats in the House

“A chair is a very difficult object,” Mies Van Der Rohe once said. “A skyscraper is almost easier.” We asked five designers to make your choice easy by picking out their favorite dining room chairs. 8

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ANDREW KOTCHEN Co-Founding Principal, Workshop/APD Jayson Home 1885 North Clybourn Avenue Chicago, IL

“We recently used the Zaha chair from Jayson Home in a New York residence. Featuring a low pitch, hand-crafted leather seat and a sleek, dark iron T-frame, the sculptural quality of the chairs add a polished rustic charm to the space that helps to frame the dining room.”

BEST SEATS IN THE HOUSE

TAMARA MAGEL Tamara Magel Studio Homenature 6 Main Street Southampton, NY “I love using these rope-and-wood chairs. They add an additional unexpected texture to a dining room, which can sometimes lack interest, since there’s limited fabrics in these rooms. They are still neutral, but highly textured-and the white goes with almost any table.”

JESSICA KAMEL Ronen Lev Richard Wrightman Design, Ltd. 44-01 11th Street Long Island City, NY “I've long admired Richard Wrightman’s campaign-inspired furniture, which pulls off the neat trick of referencing specific moments in history while feeling entirely timeless and even modern. The Chatwin dining chair offers a luxurious take on utility and versatility. We were fortunate to visit the LIC studio for our Interview Series this spring, and I fell in love all over again with his designs.”

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ELEANOR DONNELLY Stelle Lomont Rouhani Architects Arper SPA Via Lombardia 16 31050 Monastier di Treviso, Italy “We have used the strictly minimalist Norma chair by Arper in several projects. Fully upholstered in hard leather, it is a design that is very distilled and non-decorative. Nonetheless, Norma's polished, clean look still offers warmth and is very comfortable. The design is offered with three different back-heights, as a lounge chair version, and as a stool in two different heights.”

EDMUND HOLLANDER HOLLANDER design | LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS McKinnon and Harris NYC 211 East 59th Street New York, NY “A firm favorite, the Beaufort Collection from McKinnon and Harris offers an elegant solution for outdoor furniture. It is constructed to withstand the harsh oceanfront environment of the Hamptons properties we design. The powder-coated aluminum cast frames resist corrosion from the harsh ocean spray, ensuring years of use and enjoyment. The collection’s clean lines and light appearance allow the furniture to rest comfortably in highly detailed, traditional designs, as well as transitional garden spaces.”

Designing for Dirtbag Beach By Levi Shaw-Faber The massive sandbag seawall at downtown Montauk has drawn so much heat that an architecture professor at Columbia asked his students to design a better solution. 12

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Min Chen, an architecture student at Columbia, designed giant baskets to stabilize the sand dunes.

LEVI SHAW-FABER

Of all the climate, weather, and erosion-related changes happening on the East End, Montauk is probably bearing the worst of it. So much so that, in 2016, the Town of East Hampton, over the angry protests of many residents, allowed the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers to spend $8.4 million trying to protect the business district from the Atlantic Ocean by digging up the natural dunes, stacking huge sandbags, and covering them in oddly orange quarried sand — creating what one Montauk resident dubbed “Dirtbag Beach.” Within six months of the sandbag seawall’s installation, “a minor late-summer storm called Hermine underscored the recklessness

of the effort,” The East Hampton Star wrote in a September 2016 editorial. “By Tuesday morning, with the post-tropical cyclone in the Atlantic about 100 miles off eastern Long Island, several rows of the plastic-fabric bags had been exposed, and hundreds of tons of sand, which had been trucked in at great expense to keep them buried, had been washed away at the Royal Atlantic Motel.” The issue has been so contentious that Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona put it on his annual list of of wasteful government spending, writing: “The U.S. Corps of Engineers plowed away the beach’s natural dunes and constructed a wall made up of 14,000 1.7-ton geotex-

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tile bags holding orange non-beach sand topped with three feet of whiter beach sand. The sandbag wall stretches along more than a half-mile of shoreline and is surrounded by fences. The beach is now only accessible via four narrow, elevated walkways.” Robert Marino, an architect and adjunct associate professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, thought that Dirtbag Beach would be an interesting site for a second-year graduate architecture “studio” course for the spring semester of 2018. “It has to be rich from many different points of view,” Marino prompted, “it can’t just be designing a building.

There has to be many different pressures.” He certainly picked a site rich with possibility. After taking the students to visit the beach and assigning readings — including articles in The Star— he instructed them to design a building that both reinforced the dune and provided an area for youth recreation.

One of the students’ most successful projects took inspiration from the storm fences that are so prevalent on our ocean beaches. Emma Ross designed a boardwalk structure of sorts that, as Marino said, “is so dense that that the whole thing acts like a dune fence,” trapping wind-blown sand to reinforce the dune.

LEVI SHAW-FABER

Luiza Canuto envisioned a series of concrete pyramids to retain the sand that gets washed toward the water and away with the waves. She then designed a usable space atop the pyramids. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The whole thing underneath the building is basically a sand trap,â&#x20AC;? Marino said.

Min Chen thought that the best way to reinforce the dunes would be to build giant baskets and bury them. She used the platforms on top of the baskets for the recreation center.

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Richard Lee decided not to reinforce the dunes with fences, concrete, or baskets; rather, he designed a large structure to sit atop the dune. The base of the building would be filled with sand, anchoring it.

Yizhou Wangâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s project aimed to reinforce the dune with a large concrete foundation and an undulating seawall. The recreation center would be inside the wall.

What makes Robert Marinoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s class so interesting is the opportunity for free thinking afforded to these students, who did not have to fully consider political and engineering constraints in the construction of their designs. None of these projects would likely ever

get built, but that is not the point. Storm after storm continues to threaten Montaukâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s core, and we need as much awareness and as many ideas as possible to save it from looming disaster.

Shop 'Til You Drop By Lang Phipps Photos by William Jess Laird The mom and pops have died. The summer-only shops continue to pop up. How did we get here? And where are we going? 18

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Turpan, a luxury home-goods store in East Hampton, has been doing business for 17 years.

LANG PHIPPS

“Retail apocalypse” may sound overly dramatic, but the term resonates with most Americans of our generation who have watched the mom and pops disappear; it has its own meaty Wikipedia entry, and reliable financial news sources such as Bloomberg and Forbes use it regularly in print. The data behind the retail apocalypse is grim. Last year, store closings more than tripled to nearly 7,000 nationally, according to Fung Global Retail and Technology, a retail think tank. The economy is resurgent, but, as the Atlantic wrote in 2017, physical retail stores have lost 50,000 jobs nationally since the Great Recession began.

While all that has been going on across America, an incongruous subplot has been unfolding in our East End communities, including East Hampton: the spread of so-called “formula stores.” Formula stores belong to companies with 14 or more identical outlets, and have at least three standardized branding features, such as employee uniforms, menus, or trademarks. Think Starbucks replacing Eddie’s Luncheonette. Think J. Crew where there used to be the Carousel Shop. The “big-box” phenomenon — Walmart broad-shouldering its way into a small town’s backyard, eating up livelihoods and emptying downtowns — has largely been fended off east of the Shinnecock Canal, but as eyes were on the fight against that sort of development, the formula store crept in and took over Main Street.

Reformation Beach House in East Hampton is one of many pop-ups this summer.

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A view of Main Street East Hampton (top) and the real estate agency Brown Harris Stevens (bottom), one of seven major real estate offices in the village.

LANG PHIPPS

Greg and Katherine Turpan, veterans of the Hamptons retail scene.

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Nantucket, a historic old whaling community that has a lot in common with East Hampton, has a bylaw backed by the island’s planning board that prohibits chain stores from the downtown business district. Some see this as an elite reaction to the homogenization of modern life, but the thinking behind it is sound: It would be bad for the community’s economy as a whole if visitors arriving for a vacation or a summer rental were met with homogeneous storefronts that could be found anywhere. Port Jefferson Village has a similar law in place, as does Ogunquit, Maine. In East Hampton Town and Village, there are laws that limit the size of commercial buildings and block certain types of illuminated signage. However, such ordinances haven’t stopped two CVS chain drug stores from being built, putting a strain on locally owned competitors, and they haven’t stopped the proliferation of luxury fashion brands from occupying Main Street (and decamping when the weather turns cold, leaving windows empty for the long winter).

“We don’t measure business in terms of months out here. We measure in terms of weeks. We’ve got the cost of doing business 12 months a year, and we have what would be considered normal, seven-days-a-week business for a little longer than two months a year.”

“I can’t imagine a Starbucks here 30 years ago. People got their coffee from the Marmador, or Speed King’s, or Dreesen’s,” says Barbara Borsack, a longtime member of the East Hampton Village Board. “When I was a kid out here, the summer people liked to be part of the community. They liked the small, local shops. Now there’s a whole different mentality, where they want what they’re familiar with from New York out here.” And what about those pop-ups? According to Greg Turpan, a veteran retailer who owns the home-goods mecca Turpan, they started popping up like mushrooms because it is nearly impossible for a superhigh-end store to stay profitable year round in a resort town. “We don’t measure business in terms of months out here,” Turpan says, “we measure in terms of weeks. We’ve got the cost of doing business 12 months a year, and we have what would be considered normal, seven-days-a-week business for a little longer than two months a year.” This is why storefronts are empty. “There’s a little bit of a wheel of chance in early spring,” Turpan says. “A lot of landlords would certainly like to have year-round tenants, but when they don’t get them, they rent to people who will pay more for three or four months than the yearround renters. But once the [customers] go back to the city, the [popups] do, too.” This summer’s pop-ups include Goop Sag Harbor; Aerin East Hampton and its neighbors Jimmy Choo and Reformation Beach House; Sugarfina in Southampton, and Monrow x Surf Lodge in Montauk. When they first appeared in the late 1990s — from London to Tokyo — pop-ups were creatively engaging retail spaces with a lifespan from three days to three months, often selling radical, or at least fresh, fashion, art, or tech gear. The pop-ups of the Hamptons circa 2018 are not experimental or creative in this way, however. They are more of a response to economic expediency. It boosts a brand to make the scene, it drives business to online stores, and it keeps costs down.

LANG PHIPPS

Not everyone buys into the retail-apocalypse narrative. Hal Zwick has been the go-to commercial broker in East Hampton for 15 years. He plays down the idea that pop-ups are the disruptors they seem to be, and rejects the casting of landlords as the heavies behind the empty storefronts of early April.

that Compass Real Estate took over the 3,000 square-foot Tiffany’s space after the jeweler left, making it one of seven major real estate firms holding down retail territory in East Hampton. It’s hard to believe that there’d be that much available housing stock to keep all of them in business — but real estate continues to rock on the East End.

“The number of pop-up tenants has decreased in East Hampton over the last two years, from about 17 to three or four,” he said in an interview. “The landlords have worked with the tenants to lower their overhead, giving security to their tenants about their bottom line and allowing them to commit to multi-year leases.“

Despite the challenges of East Hampton retail, many Fifth Avenue brands still aren’t put off by East Hampton’s narrow window of profitability. Filling out the storefronts surrounding the real estate offices are, among other makers of fashion and luxury goods: Elie Tahari, Ralph Lauren, Piaget, Optyx, Roberta Freymann, Tesla, Loro Piana, and Brunello Cucinelli. Brunello Cucinelli is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to expand and renovate its Newtown Lane outpost.

Realtors like Zwick suggest a reality check: comparing East Hampton rents with rents in areas of Manhattan that serve a similar customer. Rental of a store on Madison Avenue can reach $2,200 a square foot; a Newtown Lane landlord is currently asking between $160 and $200 a square-foot. Zwick also challenges the idea that the season has a hard stop at Labor Day. Although it shifts from busy-seven-days to bustling-on-weekends, the retail season, he says, remains robust through Columbus Day, when the Hamptons Film Festival is in full swing. All that may be so, but the location-specific financials out here are tough enough that some major brands have bailed after only a few years of trying to make a go of it. Hermes and Tommy Hilfiger packed up their tents and went home, as did Tiffany and Co. What’s telling is

Which brings up the key point that is — or ought to be — keeping the village board and the mayor up at night: the fact that East Hampton looks like the billionaires did the planning, not the politicians. Everyone knows that when you need to buy something (unless it’s hardware or children’s toys), you need to go elsewhere. Locals haven’t been able to afford to shop in their own hometown for many years now. Those who know about such things say that part of the blame for the retail dead zone of East Hampton Village should be laid at the feet of laws that frown upon the creation of new restaurants and take-out places, unless the particular space is grandfathered in. (Starbucks was Scoop du Jour way back in the day, for instance, and the current Scoop du Jour was once Dreesen’s. But Dylan’s Candy Bar had hell to pay when it first tried to sell ice cream.) Sag Harbor, by contrast, attracts more strollers — strollers who window-shop and keep its mom and pops alive — because it welcomes new restaurants and coffee shops and donut joints. Outdoor seating is also a non-starter in East Hampton, on account of several seemingly immovable obstacles. Even though the metered-ticket system at the Reutershan parking lot has been a success, parking is often still a problem. Borsack, of the village board, explains that there simply isn’t available land to be bought up and converted to make more space for cars: “When a property that was zoned for commercial use became available, which was rarely, we were happy to grab it for parking,” she says. “But it’s not something I see happening again anytime soon.” So what is to be done? Many of us think that the time is now — in fact, it is well past time — for the Village or Town to find a way to purchase a block of commercial property on Main or Newtown with community preservation funds to be leased below market rates to local businesses that meet set criteria for practical service to the community. Mayor Paul Rickenbach is known for insisting on the record that you cannot govern free commerce, but as things stand, free commerce is not what we have, and the retail situation needs to change to keep the

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Village healthy. And despite what some might think, a public-private C.P.F. solution, as out-of-the-box as it may sound, isn’t only the pipe dream of young radicals. Leonard I. Ackerman, a lawyer well known in East Hampton for his expertise in real estate matters, agrees: “Such an opportunity would encourage small town enterprise to reinvent itself.” What do you say, Mayor Rickenback?

Sag Harbor has retained more mom-and-pops (left and right) than East Hampton.

King Charles By Nina Channing Charles Gwathmey, the Modernist architect, began his career on the East End and helped to establish an architectural grammar that is still in use today. Recognizing his 80th birthday this June, we take a look at his groundbreaking Bluff Road residence and studio, as well as a new renovation by Worrell Yeung of another one of his houses among the dunes in Amagansett.

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When the architecture firm Worrell Yeung renovated this 1977 Charles Gwathmey house in the dunes of Amagansett, they initially wanted to do â&#x20AC;&#x153;as little as possible.â&#x20AC;? Photo by Naho Kubota

NINA CHANNING

The Gwathmey Residence and Studio on Bluff Road in Amagansett. Charles designed the house for his parents, Robert and Rosalie Gwathmey, in 1968. Photo by Scott Frances/OTTO

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In a 1991 article for The New York Times, the critic Paul Goldberger wrote, “Architecture is not free-verse. It’s like a sonnet” — meaning that it demands creativity within a strict set of limits. In poetry, those limits are linguistic: grammar, meter, and line. In architecture they are physical: gravity, proportion, and space. Walking by Charles Gwathmey’s famous residence and studio on Bluff Road in Amagansett, this poetic analogy rings particularly true. The 1,200-square-foot house — a cedar-clad composition of cubes, triangles and cylinders — has a sparse, almost lyrical, elegance. Gwathmey designed it and the adjacent studio for his parents, without a license, at the green age of 27. It was the first of many houses he would build on the South Fork, marking the beginning of a career that would help to define American Modernist architecture. Born to a Southern family, Charles “Charlie” Gwathmey spent his childhood in Charlotte, North Carolina. His parents were prominent artists who eventually moved to New York, where they taught at Cooper Union and joined a tight-knit community of bohemian academics. In 1967, they retired and bought a small property on Bluff Road, hiring Charlie, fresh out of the Yale School of Architecture, to build them a house. With a one-acre site and a strict budget of $35,000, the young Gwathmey was forced to be resourceful. He used a minimum of materials and respected the margins of the modest space. Composed of simple discrete forms and weathered to a pale gray, the house appears almost to have been carved out of stone. Inside, the space

is vertically organized and extremely efficient, accomodating a work room, living and dining space, a kitchen, two guest rooms, and a master bedroom. If all architecture is a sonnet, then this home is something even more minimal and restrained: It is a haiku. The 480-square-foot studio, completed a year later, sits about 100 feet away at a 45 degree angle to the house, creating an external harmony on the property. It is clear that Gwathmey thought of them as sculptures; a loyalist to the school of high Modernism, he took pains to ensure that his designs not appear “organic” or “integrated with nature” in any way. The flat and unadorned lawn on which the buildings sit helps to highlight their sculptural quality. From a distance, the structures appear to be facing one another on a plane, each distinct and self-contained. Visually, they evoke chess pieces, a Japanese rock garden, stanzas on a page. Gwathmey received much praise for the house. It was lauded in particular for its unique shape, and for how creatively he worked within his budget. Architectural Digest called the design groundbreaking. The New York Times called it “perfectly poised.” His parents liked it, too. Robert and Rosalie, who lived in the Bluff Road house until their deaths, were known for throwing extravagant dinner parties. (Though Rosalie, who was a fabulous cook, supposedly bemoaned the small, cramped kitchen.) “They would entertain all the time,” recalls Helen Rattray, a friend. “For such a little house, it certainly accommodated some big crowds.” Rattray can recall

NINA CHANNING

being a guest at one such Gwathmey party on a cold winter night: “With those big windows and sharp angles, I expected it to feel cold and exposed, but it was actually rather cozy.” Launching his career with a landmark, Gwathmey had the rare experience of becoming an icon in his own time. When he finally sat for his professional licensing exam, he was surprised to find his own work referenced on the test. Legend has it that the question read: “Which of these is the organic house?” Among the possible answers were Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Fallingwater” and Gwathmey’s “Residence and Studio.” Although he wanted to answer that his was the organic design, Gwathmey knew that Fallingwater was the answer that they were looking for. Somewhat begrudgingly, he ticked the box next to Wright’s name. He passed.

a four-bedroom, raised residence with ocean views, was designed by Gwathmey in 1978 for the Haupt family. From a distance, the house reads as a blank white rectangle, but walk inside and the subtlety of the design — with dramatic interior cutouts and an irregular polygonal pool — becomes evident. “We are big fans of Gwathmey — particularly his early stuff,” Worrel says. (Max Worrell and Jejon Yeung met at Yale Architecture School, Gwathmey’s alma mater, where they studied his work.) “So we were very excited when we got the call about the house. Especially given that it was in its original condition, totally untouched.” The house had been maintained by the original owner and was in good shape, but had seen some wear and tear. The foundation, built on sand, had settled, and the doors and windows needed replacing. “Our intention, at first, was really to do as little as possible.”

Shortly after, Gwathmey partnered with Robert Siegel to form Gwathmey Siegel & Associates, an architectural firm that gained international prestige for both residential and public works. Together, the firm was commissioned to design the Science Library of the New York Public Library, the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., and the renovation of the Guggenheim Museum. The firm built high-profile houses all over the country, including blue-chip projects for celebrities including Jerry Seinfeld, David Geffen, Faye Dunaway, and Oprah Winfrey.

The previous owners provided Worrell Yeung with Gwathmey’s original drawings, which served as a guide. They carefully implemented upgrades and subtle modifications that improved the functionality of the space while preserving the design’s integrity. The renovation included a full replacement of the building envelope — the roof, cedar siding, doors and windows, skylights, and pool deck — all carefully detailed to “make it look like we hadn’t done anything.”

Nick Martin, an architect in Sagaponack who began his career as an intern at Gwathmey Siegel, says, “Everything was an experiment with Charlie. He had a unique combination of ingenuity and perfectionism — it was an energy that was really inspiring to be around. He ran the office like a finely tuned instrument. Everyone had a role and a place and there was a sense of order and harmony.”

The interior required some rethinking. The clients — echoing Rosalie’s complaints from decades earlier — preferred an open kitchen layout to Gwathmey’s enclosed design, which required removing a half wall that divided the kitchen from the living room space. This, Worrell says, was probably the most significant change they made to the structure, and it was undertaken with the utmost care. “At every stage of the process we were asking ourselves, ‘What would Gwathmey do?’”

In all, Gwathmey built more than 10 houses on the East End before his death in 2009. The last, a large estate on Georgica Pond for Steven Spielberg, was completed in 1985. After his mother died in 2001, Gwathmey used the house on Bluff Road as weekend place (though he slightly upgraded his original design, replacing the concrete floors with marble). While many of his houses are still in the hands of their original owners, it seems like every few years a Gwathmey will come onto the market, making headlines and raising fears about whose clutches it will fall into. Fast-forward to 2016. The New York City architecture studio Worrell Yeung gets a call about a Gwathmey in the dunes in Amagansett. “It was a unique request,” Max Worrell remembers. “The clients weren’t looking to remodel, but to restore the home.” The house in question,

The results are striking. The house, which is raised slightly off the sand and tucked into a grove of white pines, looks at once brand new and utterly retro. Entering through the unassuming sliding glass front door, you find curved walls and interior geometric shapes that recall Le Corbusier. Abundant natural light and wood tones soften the open, sparsely decorated space, making it feel comfortable. With south facing floor-to-ceiling windows and a large rear deck, the house gives the sense that it is unfolding as you move through it, inviting you in. In the living room, a 45-degree wall cutout provides an attractive focal point and functions as an interior window, offering a partial glimpse into the main living room, which then dramatically unveils itself as you ascend the staircase.

Interior of the iconic Gwathmey house (top) on Bluff Road. Yellow detailing provides a dynamic focal point visible both outside and inside

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The 1977 Dune House (bottom) highlights Corbusier-inspired geometric forms. Photos by Norman Mcgrath

NINA CHANNING

Interior of the Cogan Residence (top) on Hook Pond in East Hampton. Photo by Ezra Stoller/Esto. Bathroom of the Sedacca Residence in East Hampton, one of Gwatheyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s earlier designs.

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Max Worrell describes painstakingly matching materials to Gwathmeyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s original designs, from the white pine trim to the kitchen counter laminate (which was replaced with a high quality look-alike). Such details reflect an uncommon level of care. One is reminded of

The living room of the Worrell Yeung renovation. Photo by Naho Kubota

art historians who restore old paintings with a scalpel and brush. And, in a way, the two are not so different. The house is an homage to Gwathmeyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vision. Like a good translation, it updates the language while leaving the poetry intact.

WINERY OPEN DAILY YEAR-ROUND 11- 5 1927 SCUTTLEHOLE ROAD BRIDGEHAMPTON (631) 537-7224

East End

Design Awards

AND THE WINNERS ARE… At our awards event at the LongHouse Reserve earlier this month, our keynote speaker, Edwina von Gal — the notable landscape designer and founder of the Perfect Earth Project — encouraged the audience to break down the barrier between public and private land. She said that a good first step toward environmental stewardship is to do no harm to your own land and advocated for private landscapes that contribute to the environment. I think the same can be said about architectural projects. When done right, design can enhance the environment, and these winning projects do that particularly well. At End, we spend a lot of time looking at architectural, landscape, and interior design, but even we were shocked by the beauty of this year’s winners. The last two Design Awards have affirmed our opinion that the East End has some of the best architecture, landscapes, and interiors in the country. Now all we need to do is trim the privot a little lower so we can see these incredible designs… This year’s 84 entries in 15 categories came from 31 firms. All projects are on the East End of Long Island — on the South Fork from Westhampton to Montauk, plus Shelter Island, and on the North Fork from Riverhead to Orient — and were completed between 2013 and 2018. — Levi Shaw-Faber, Editor-in-Chief

THE JURY

STEVEN HARRIS, AIA Founding Partner of Steven Harris Architects LLP This Tribeca firm, known for multiple projects for Barneys New York as well as for many houses in the Hamptons, has received numerous American Institute of Architects awards and Interior Design Best of Year nods, and been recognized in Architectural Digest’s AD100 and Elle Décor’s A-List. Steven Harris is a professor of architecture at Yale, where he has taught for more than 25 years. Diversity is a hallmark of his prolific and innovative work: His A.I.A. award–winning projects range from a Manhattan townhouse to a bowling alley and pool hall in Queens to the southernmost private residence on the Baja Peninsula. In 2008, Harris was inducted into the Interior Design Hall of Fame.

CLAIRE WEISZ, FAIA Founding Partner of WXY architecture+urban design WXY is known for a community-centered approach to architecture, urban design, and planning. This year, Weisz was honored with a medal of honor from the New York chapter of the A.I.A., the group’s highest award to a member for distinction in the profession. In 2016, the same chapter named WXY its Firm of the Year. Weisz is a fellow of the A.I.A., having served on the NYSCA Architecture Design Panel both national and international juries. She has lectured and taught widely, most recently as the 2017 Portman Visiting Critic at the Georgia Tech School of Architecture. She was named one of Fast Company’s most creative people in business in 2017. Some of WXY’s critically lauded projects include the Spring Street Salt Shed, the reconstruction of the Rockaway Boardwalk, and the SeaGlass Carousel in Battery Park.

DOUGLAS REED, FASLA Principal of Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture Reed Hilderbrand is best known on the East End for creating the prairie-like setting for Herzog and de Meuron’s Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, but it has been making waves far and wide since the mid-1990s with landscapes for universities and colleges (including Duke, Harvard, Yale, M.I.T., Bennington, and Brandeis), for art museums (the Clark Art Institute, the Chazen Museum of Art, the Corning Museum of Glass, Crystal Bridges, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Phoenix Art Museum), and for public parks and influential residential projects. The American Society of Landscape Architects named Reed Hilderbrand its 2013 Firm of the Year. Douglas Reed is a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects who lectures widely and participates as a critic on reviews for design schools across the nation.

NEW HOUSE UNDER 2,999 SQ FT Bates Masi + Architects WI BEACH HAMPTON Amagansett, 2014

A couple bought a quarter-acre lot more than 40 years before the house was built. “The state, county, and town codes evolved, and what was purchased as a buildable lot had to undergo extensive negotiations to permit even the smallest house allowed. With a footprint of 15 feet by 20 feet, and a height of two stories, 600-square-feet was the largest house that could be built.” “Takes cues from its geometric predecessors but charts a distinctive approach to the small footprint.” — Claire Weisz (Juror)

Photos Courtesy of Bates Masi + Architects

NEW HOUSE 3,000–4,999 SQ FT Deborah Berke Partners

R NE

CRESTVIEW LANE HOUSE NO. 2 Sagaponack, 2015 The architects designed this modern beach house around the clients’ active indoor/outdoor lifestyle, with framed views of the woods and water nearby. “The composition of stacked and shifted rectangular volumes creates multiple levels of decks and terraces, which can be used at different points throughout the day and the year. The interior of the house is focused on the surrounding landscape: floor-toceiling glazing on the first floor extends the open plan living space onto the adjacent lawn, and horizontal windows on the second floor direct the eye to views of the ocean to the south and to a nature preserve to the north.” “Super elegant design that makes the most out of front and back/public and private moods of the house.” — Claire Weisz (Juror)

Photos by Chris Cooper

NEW HOUSE OVER 5,000 SQ FT James Merrell Architects

BRIDGEHAMPTON HOUSE Bridgehampton, 2015 The architects wanted the forms of this Bridgehampton house to “recall the vernacular of local agricultural buildings. The central double-height glass living room sets a tone for the project, connecting front and back yards and allowing both east and west light to penetrate deep into the living spaces.” “Modern elements such as large glazing and thin mullions are incorporated into the vernacular form in a really lovely way. The louvered space above the living room is probably my favorite feature.” — Steven Harris (Juror)

Photos by Raimund Koch

RENOVATION OVER 3,500 SQ FT Worrell Yeung Architecture

HOUSE IN THE DUNES Amagansett, 2016 The architects completed a full gut renovation and restoration of the Haupt Residence, designed by Charles Gwathmey in 1976. “The project carefully implemented upgrades and subtle modifications to create a more functional and useful home to meet the needs of the new owner. The exterior scope of the project included a full replacement of the building envelope, including the roof, cedar siding, doors and windows, skylights, and pool deck — all designed and detailed to preserve the essence of the original design. The interior scope involved a considered rethinking of the kitchen area, to create more openness and connection to the adjacent living spaces and outdoor pool deck. The footprint of the kitchen is the same, but elements and materials were reinterpreted, inspired by the original elements throughout the house.” “Even the best of designs need occasional refreshing. The Worrell Yeung renovation does this very well in the Gwathmey house. The original spirit is still there, but with a new sheen to it.” — Steven Harris (Juror)

INN

Photos by Naho Kubota

RENOVATION UNDER 3,499 SQ FT Oza Sabbeth Architects

BLACK HOUSE Sagaponack, 2015 The architects embarked on an “adaptive reuse” of a humble beach house. “Inspired by a piece of furniture designed by Ineke Hans for the Danish design group Moooi,” the architects “developed an exterior skin of black rubber and recycled plastic (80 percent post-consumer waste). The rubber serves to seal the existing structure from the elements, and the recycled plastic screen forms a protective barrier for the rubber skin while also doubling as a sunshade to mitigate heat gain on the black surface.” “This rubber-as-rainscreen-clad house will be on the mustsee list for designers. It’s one of a kind and future thinking at the same time.” — Claire Weisz (Juror)

Photos by Attic Fire

LANDSCAPE OR GARDEN Shepard Butler Landscape Associates

AMAGANSETT RESIDENCE Amagansett, 2017 The landscape architects designed this property to fit the “long, narrow site, allowing for an exaggerated play on scale and composition of the composed lines connecting the series of garden rooms. This playful and experiential series of gardens ties the architecture seamlessly to the site and includes the meadow, sassafras grove, outdoor shower courtyard, pool garden, west walk, and the north shade/boulder garden. Each room is unique and provides the user with varied and ephemeral experiences.” “The idea of garden rooms serves this project very well in connecting the experience in the built dwelling with the experience of nature. This is exactly what a country residence should be about.” — Steven Harris (Juror)

INN

Photos by Matthew Carbone

GREEN INTERVENTION Geoffrey Nimmer Landscapes

AMAGANSETT GREEN ROOF Amagansett, 2017 The roof on this house was not just an aesthetic choice. “The green roof acts as a form of insulation, absorbing heat in the summer and reducing heat loss through the roof in the winter. By protecting the roofing membrane from the elements, a green roof saves on landfill space, since the membrane does not deteriorate and need to be replaced.” “The varying green roof levels integrate with the landscape in a very successful way.” — Steven Harris (Juror)

Photos by Curtis Eaves, Air Story Media

OUTDOOR LIVING SPACE HOLLANDER design | Landscape Architects ER

NN WI

MEADOWMERE RESIDENCE Southampton, 2013

The landscape architects were inspired by the site Tenacre, a property designed by John Russell Pope in the 1920s. “The landscape design reinterprets the grounds of Tenacre into a lower-maintenance, less formal aesthetic better suited to contemporary living. The wide variety of spaces offers a full experience — from intimate gatherings to fullscale events. Outdoor living spaces surround the house and are organized into garden rooms accessed by main circulation routes. Garden areas connect directly to interior rooms of the residence, making outdoor living effortless.” “Intriguing summoning of Pope's Tenacre using more modest, contemporary plantings — not easily done. This project emanates passion and conviction.” — Douglas Reed (Juror)

Photos by Charles Mayer

SWIMMING POOL LaGuardia Design Landscape Architects WI

BUTTER LANE RESIDENCE Bridgehampton, 2014 The pool takes advantage of views of a former nursery’s “now mature trees that were planted 20 years ago. Taking inspiration from this connection, a custom rim-flow pool was designed on axis with the nursery rows, extending views to the borrowed landscape beyond. A custom ipe arbor sits on a stone plinth above the pool terrace, providing spaces for dining and socializing.” “I admire the clean, simple lines and surfaces with which this project achieves a high level of refinement.” — Steven Harris (Juror)

Photos by Anthony Crisafulli

ART SPACE IN RESIDENCE TBD Architecture & Design Studio

NN WI

HIS/HERS ART STUDIO Water Mill, 2013 Designed for an artist couple, “the building is composed of two intersecting volumes, one a steel frame with a translucent polycarbonate curtain wall, and the other a wood frame with cedar siding and punched windows. The first volume houses a collage studio for him and the second houses a ceramic studio for her. The two intersecting volumes are each composed of distinctive skins which reflect the two different working environments.” “What a refuge there among the trees.” — Douglas Reed (Juror)

Photos by Matthew Williams

RESIDENTIAL BATHROOM James Merrell Architects

BRIDGEHAMPTON HOUSE Bridgehampton, 2015

The architects designed this master bathroom for simplicity and sunlight. “West light enters the space through an expansive louvered window in the shower. The exterior red cedar louvers create privacy in the shower without sacrificing views and light. The same wood louver detail is mirrored in the exterior shower, located on the opposite side of the house, harmoniously creating a symmetry in the gable end. Touches of bleached white oak on the vanity, windows, and interior door add a sense of softness and warmth to the all-tiled master bathroom.” “Beautiful, elemental atmosphere and surface.” — Douglas Reed (Juror)

Photos by Joshua McHugh

Photos by Raimund Koch

RESIDENTIAL KITCHEN Stelle Lomont Rouhani Architects

FIELD HOUSE Sagaponack, 2016 In collaboration with Julie Hillman Design and Boffi, the architects wanted to maximize space with a “neat and tidy organization. This is amplified by the super-large sliding glass window at the sink, which allows the kitchen to extend outside. An outdoor bar counter provides for easy dialogue and interaction and gives a nod to the olden days of poolside concessions.” “It would have been an injustice to not capture the exquisite view. The expansive, unobstructed glazing was absolutely the right move for this kitchen.” — Steven Harris, (Juror)

NN WI

Photos courtesy of Stelle Lomont Rouhani Architects

RESIDENTIAL LIVING ROOM Deborah Berke Partners

CRESTVIEW LANE HOUSE NO. 2 LIVING ROOM Sagaponack, 2015 To take advantage of the surrounding landscape, “floor-toceiling glazing on the first floor extends the open-plan living space onto the adjacent lawn, and horizontal windows on the second floor direct the eye to views of the ocean to the south and to a nature preserve to the north. The open-plan kitchen, dining, and living areas flow seamlessly from one area to the next. Floor-to-ceiling glass windows and doors give the living room unobstructed views of the landscape on both sides. The living area flows directly out onto the deck and the pool beyond. A crisply detailed wooden ceiling gives the space warmth.” “I commend the decision to open the living room to the landscape on two sides. It allows the space to break out of the enclosing rectangular volume.” — Steven Harris (Juror)

Photos by Chris Cooper

RESIDENTIAL BEDROOM MB Architecture

HOUSE IN THE LANES Amagansett, 2017 The clients for this bedroom wanted to feel “protected and enclosed” in a “womb-like” space with “limited openings to the outside.” The architects “positioned windows in places with critical views to the outside and direct sunlight, while keeping the bed area privately away.” “Residential architecture that nails shaping an interior while still holding its own in the landscape.” — Claire Weisz (Juror)

NN WI

Photos by Matthew Carbone

NONRESIDENTIAL PROJECT Deborah Berke Partners

BOOKHAMPTON East Hampton, 2016 When BookHampton came under new ownership, Deborah Berke Partners was enlisted to “refresh the interior, strengthen the shop’s identity, and make it easier to browse and find books. A large mezzanine level was removed to open up and declutter the space. The redesign of the beloved shop added new lighting, shelving, and a checkout desk. Natural light streams through uncovered windows, transoms, and the glass front door. Custom window shelving allow light through while displaying numerous titles. The color palette of pale wood, white, and deep blue back panels reflects the beachside locale while also allowing the books to stand out.”

“What is laudable about BookHampton is the project’s contextuality — the color scheme really subtly and successfully references the hues and the atmosphere of the town and the nearby seascape.” — Steven Harris (Juror)

Photos by Michael Granacki

UNBUILT PROJECT Page Goolrick Architect PC

MONTAUK CONTOUR POOL Montauk, 2016

NN WI

For a residence on a hill, this pool was designed to maximize views of Lake Montauk and the ocean. “The pool orientation captures the views, the sun’s path, and desirable prevailing southwest summer breezes. A fence enclosing the pool area is composed of a series of thin vertical rods providing unimpeded views from the house.” “Edgy, playful — an evocative game with the East End's last landscapes.” — Douglas Reed (Juror)

CHRISTOPHER WALSH

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