Sometimes all you need to make ideas gel is
the change of perspective afforded by a little travel. New York–based architect
James Biber of Pentagram (an international firm headquartered in London)
discovered this when he was asked to design a beach house at the eastern reaches
of Long Island. His clients, a 40ish independent film producer and his writer
wife, weren’t exactly sure of what they wanted to build when they bought two
adjacent seaside properties in Montauk (one of them with a bit of cinematic history to it—a cottage once owned
by Elia Kazan that was demolished to make room for the new home).
"It was always going to be a modern and robust house," says
Biber. "But at some point we took a trip to California and went on a tour of
case study homes, everything from Irving Gill to Schindler to Neutra and Eames.
By the time we were done, we had a common language and a whole catalog of
comparisons—we could refer to this glass wall in that Neutra house or the roof
overhang at that Schindler house—and we agreed we should build a case study
house in New York."
Under this stylistic rubric, however, Biber and associate
Michael Zweck-Bronner had to accommodate the couple’s different personalities:
he liked cool materials and clean lines; she liked warmer textures and a human
touch. And though they both enjoyed having guests, they also relished their
privacy, so guest quarters would have to be separated from the main house.
The architects addressed the first requirement by designing two
L-shaped structures that nestle together at common areas, one incorporating
mostly steel and glass, the other glazed brick and wood. All these materials
were typical of case study homes, of course. But this was not California, so
Biber and Zweck-Bronner had to adapt the form to the more mercurial elements of
East Coast seasons. So the basic shell is concrete, with a skin of steel and
brick (actual structural materials in the California versions). Windows—some up
to 10 feet high and wide—were "highly engineered," notes Biber, with
hurricane-resistant glass.
The floors of case study homes were often terrazzo both inside
and out, an impossibility in Montauk because of the expansion and contraction
that occurs with the freezing and thawing cycles of New York winters. So the
architects deployed radiant-heat terrazzo inside, its slabs separated by metal
stripping to control cracking, while outside they used pre-cast terrazzo-like
slabs with no metal to allow for the effects of radical temperature
fluctuations. "This created the illusion of that continuous indoor-outdoor
surface," says Biber, who also sandblasted the outdoor portion to reduce
slipperiness.
Building restrictions also caused complications. To avoid
covering too much of the building site with house—frowned upon by local
codes—Biber and Zweck-Bronner designed large trellises that visually continue
the roofline past the glass curtain walls, a reference to the concrete overhangs
favored by the likes of Neutra and Schindler. And to disguise the home’s
5,000-square-foot volume, the architects tucked a pantry, wine cellar, home
theater and other rooms (about 2,000 square feet in all) belowground.
While the main home was "a beautifully detailed, very elegant
case study house," explains Biber, "the guesthouse is like the kids table at
Thanksgiving—always more fun than the adults table." This building evolved into
a long vertical structure suspended over a perpendicularly placed pool. The
rooms were arranged in a row and divided by large sliding doors in "beach ball
colors," resembling, says Biber, a 1950s motel. Guests reach it via a spiral
staircase painted a bright, Big Bird yellow. As it went up, though, next-door
neighbors erected a home overlooking the "motel," so the architects devised a
stationary louver screen of cedar along one side of the structure to block it
without obliterating either the view or the circulation of air.
"Together, the houses create an outdoor courtyard, which you’re constantly
traversing," concludes Biber, "and where kids play and everyone enjoys the view.
And when you open the doors and windows to these houses, they become vessels for
listening to the ocean."
