Houzz Tour: Design and Surprise in The Hamptons
Mention The Hamptons, and instantly images of gargantuan shore holiday waterfalls superimposed on the rolling grassy landscape are conjured. It’s nearly a farce to call those homes beach houses. Choosing to not fall victim to this cliché, Robert Young Architects opted for understated and casual elegance when designing the primary residence for a family in Montauk. The 4,500-square-foot main home and 1,800-square-foot guesthouse are gently nestled on a lakefront compound. Practicality and simplicity synonymous with coastal living is the central motif. Modern and special accents increase the design, resulting in the perfect balance of style and function to make a uniquely manicured dream home.
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Robert Young Architects
Pulling up the driveway, the first evidence of the home you will find is the garage, aptly called the barn, in your right. Designed in the same language as the rest of the home, the barn completely opens upward on both sides allowing a car to push through and down to the water if needed. As you make your way throughout the property, you encounter the tiniest structures so as to not overwhelm your personal experience and discovery of the site. The compound was designed completely with the individual scale in your mind.
Robert Young Architects
Once reaching the main home, the full scale of the home remains withheld from view. The roofline at the entry to the main home is reduced and more understated, with the larger two-story portion of the home receding to the back of the property. The residence is composed of two properties that the owners could get over time to actually create the sensation of a real sprawling aquatic chemical.
Robert Young Architects
The most important entry may easily be another outside door. There is nothing pretentious or exclamatory about all of the design choices made for this home. The front door only serves as a portal between interior and outdoor spaces.
Robert Young Architects
The approach and entry to the home is a game of hide and reveal. There is an intentional delayed visual gratification. Although you are given an idea that the home is waterfront as you drive onto the property, the circulation of this entry follows a route that withholds any view of the lake until you’ve achieved the center of the home.
Robert Young Architects
Even at the entrance of the home, you are forced to walk past a reclaimed driftwood wall, which is the kitchen, in your left and into the living room. It’s only there where you get the full experience of this opinion.
Robert Young Architects
Whether relaxing on the PK22 Easy Chairs or napping on the Long Island Sectional, the living room serves as the physical centre of the home, but also the psychological heart. “The home was really designed from the interior to your family inside,” explains architect Robert Young. As both partitions open to connect the view, the sunlight, and the breeze, all of bodily in addition to social components converge here.
Robert Young Architects
Custom built-ins at the front end of the living room attract the substantial expanse of the room back down to human scale. The handmade walnut dining table adds one minute of color to an otherwise monochromatic palette.
The home intentionally lacks color in order to more clearly reveal texture. The”composition of the home creates a dialogue between different components — glass, aluminum, steel, and wood. It’s a pared-down design, but in no way minimal,” continues Young.
Robert Young Architects
Designed to resemble a Swedish barn, the huge structural trusses enable the primary living area to be one open, constant, and uninterrupted space. Together with the construction of this home made entirely of wood, the natural warping and wear of the planks has been something Youthful has enjoyed watching as the home ages. Young notes that it had been quite a struggle convincing a perfectionist builder who in this case, gaps between floorboards were okay.
Robert Young Architects
Most family meals take place in the kitchen. Stainless Steel and White Gioia Venatino marble were carefully chosen for its countertops due to their visual and material features. As both materials era, they will visually demonstrate the wear of use, and in the view of this architect, be beautiful. It’s the imperfections that make these spaces lovely and livable.
Moving your gaze out of the kitchen and on the lake, detect there’s also an open pass-through to a screened dining porch out.
Robert Young Architects
Material choice is a great way to connect the interior with the exterior of the home. Materials used at the kitchen continue out and on the porch in order to eliminate the threshold between inside and outside.
Robert Young Architects
The slope of this landscape gives the master bedroom an unobstructed view throughout the property and out on the lake. Constantly aware of the house’s proximity to the ocean, Young designed the home in many ways like a boat. Modest built-ins and low-maintenance materials allow the family to actually enjoy the home rather than constantly working to keep such an expansive beach home.
Robert Young Architects
Keeping a balance of traditional and contemporary components is as much part of the theme as the low-maintenance coastal influence. Here a claw-foot tub paired with a contemporary deck-mounted sink retains the design fresh and unpredictable.
Robert Young Architects
The outside shower is conveniently located just off the master bedroom. The family uses this shower in summer or may use it to wash off after a swim at the pool.
Robert Young Architects
“Many guests that visit the home would say that the girls’ bedroom is the favourite room in the home,” adds Young. These bunk beds have been custom designed for three young sisters that share this space together. The furnishings, in addition to the architecture and interior, were designed by Robert Young Architects. The homeowners were very involved, leading to a collaborative and innovative procedure.
Robert Young Architects
Situated at the opposite end of the home, the guest bedroom is more commonly known as the guest home due to its seclusion from the rest of the bedrooms. Again, a neutral palette and fuss-free materials are key here.
Robert Young Architects
The continuous juxtaposition of traditional and contemporary continue in the guest bathroom with the brightly colored white-pine planks and the contemporary sink. The muted palette and the slate tile floors reiterates the monochromatic theme.
Robert Young Architects
When entering the compound, one route diverges to make two parallel paths: A direct path leads you straight to the front entrance of this home — or you can choose the secondary route that meanders across the lake and ends at this mudroom entry. Once inside the home, both paths converge once more.
Robert Young Architects
“The picture was designed to look like it wasn’t designed,” continues Young. As a result of environmental regulations, the first 50 feet from the water has to serve as a natural buffer. The plants found naturally in that region were then integrated into the landscape design. The plant has been planted in swaths since it happens naturally, resembling brush strokes on the landscape.
Robert Young Architects
Robert Young Architects designed the landscape in collaboration with Brady Mitchell Anderson Landscape Architecture in order to Keep a smooth continuity between the structures and the surroundings. The plan is simple, clean, and is based heavily on native plants.
Robert Young Architects
While the huge expanse of the perfectly manicured lawn across the pool sharply contrasts the surrounding plant and nautralistic style that dominates the vast majority of the property, it creates a clean visual breeze and also allows young kids to safely play across the pool.
Robert Young Architects
Looking round the pool and lower portion of the landscape, you can just make out the guest house nestled in the right corner of this photo. From the main house to the yard and pool, there’s a grade change of 10 feet; just sufficient to visibly maintain a comfortable sense of seclusion and privacy for each room.
Robert Young Architects
The ability to lose yourself in 1 area of the compound while still keeping close proximity to the other is that the genius of this design. Passing from the main house to the guest home, you encounter this rock staircase as you move down through the landscape. The approach has been carefully executed in a way that dismisses all visual and physical connection with the main house once you reach the guest home.
Robert Young Architects
Upon discovery, you realize that the guest home design nearly mirrors that of the main home, down to the sliding glass walls and muted materials and color palette.
Robert Young Architects
The boathouse, since the family calls it, gets opened during the summer for visiting guests. Its close proximity to the pool makes it a very convenient sofa and changing area.
Robert Young Architects
Because of this, while the style and materials mimic the design of the main home, many have been left a little unfinished and frequently cost less. The kitchen in the previous photograph, as an example, is from IKEA.
Robert Young Architects
Just as swiftly as if never discovered, the compound fades quietly into the scene as you leave, and will continue to exist in hidden perfection. I thank Robert Young Architects and the proprietors of this seclusive gem for permitting the Houzz community and also me a glimpse into the beautifully concealed realm of The Lake House.
Photography by Michael Moran.
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