Living Levels: Dealing with Complex Topography
This 4,500 Square Feet High End Residential Home was designed and built for a family of four. It is situated at the intersection of two large farm fields and a small naturally occurring basin in Sagaponack, New York. The farms result in large watersheds. Coupled with the Basin, the site becomes quite topographically challenging. This complex topography opened up the possibility for a new home with multiple levels.
One approaches the house low down from within the Basin. This Hampton home is slowly revealed through a wild landscape of a few trees. At the lowest level a bedroom is perched on the rim of this depression and overlooks these same trees to the North. Farther up, the first floor houses the Entrance, Living Room, Kitchen, Dining and Family room. This level opens to a swimming pool and views of the farm to the West beyond. A private enclave for the master bedroom is tucked between the first and second floors and looks over the farm to the South. The second floor includes three bedrooms and juts out like an outcropping to create a sheltered outdoor space below.
These various levels are composed of an agglomeration of simple shed like forms placed within this undulating landscape. A stair weaves through these forms tying them together from within while allowing them to be separated from without.
This complex topography also opened up the possibility for a house with multiple fronts. There is no backyard. Various Domestic spaces tend to create their own private relationships to the landscape. This tied into a primary design objective the client came to us with: A house with multiple, private, encounters with the outside. In aggregate we feel the client’s sensibility as an Artist comes through in a comfort with the unconventional and the un-manicured.
