Pond House

East Hampton, NY

In response to a long narrow site, this house’s discrete forms were placed and connected to create intimate spaces and unexpected connections to the surrounding garden and distant views. Aesthetic restrictions imposed through a covenant requiring a traditional building inspired the project’s design, which subverts traditional massing with modern insertions and detailing. LSS organized the house for multi-generational use by dramatically linking discrete living spaces for different age groups to central family spaces.

Circulation is organized to heighten the sense of discovery and to frame distant views. The children’s wing serves as a gate house, marking the entry to the site. A path of stone planks leads through this building into a grove of birch trees, defined by two buildings and a glass bridge overhead.  From here the distant pond is first glimpsed through the main entry doors. A white volume inserted into the building’s central space creates a floating open-air porch.

The buildings are clad in white-painted cedar rain screen with cedar shingled roof – traditional materials detailed as an abstract skin. The taut wood is interrupted by modern, large scale aluminum curtain walls and windows. These precise interventions hint at the structurally expressive details within: tensile stainless steel tie rods, cable-suspended stairs and floating bridges.