Bridgehampton, New York, USA
New-York-based Robert Young Architects recreated and transformed a family residence emphasizing the simple, iconic barn-like shapes of the previous structure creating a house flooded with light and breaking the boundaries between the exterior and interior spaces.
Built-in the 1980s, the original house had not only become stylistically outdated, but it had also fallen into functional disrepair.
The House on Mitchell Lane has recently been awarded a 2022 International Architecture Awards Honorable Mention by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
Considered to be at the end of its lifespan, the previous owners had placed it on the market as a tear-down.
Seeing the possibility of the existing structure and wanting to take a more sustainable approach, the architect proposed an alternative: instead of razing and beginning anew, they would design a purposeful renovation, reimagining the 40-year-old house as a modern residential environment.
From the outside, the renovation transformed the house’s architectural presence, preserving the building’s underlying structure while taking a clean-slate approach to its envelope.
The original building was a loose assemblage of pitched-roof volumes.
But the renovation architect identified a lack of visual clarity, on the whole, owing to the vertical siding that had been painted uniformly white (which masked the interplay between the volumes), and to the arrangement of windows and doors (which showed a little compositional relationship to the overall forms).
To give each volume a distinct presence, the architect clad them in cedar shingles, a nod to the region’s vernacular, while using flat cedar planks stained black to provide a visual hyphen between the pitched roof forms.
Inside, a thoughtful reconfiguration of spaces optimized the layout, establishing increased privacy, opening up more preferable views, and creating indoor/outdoor environments.
In the previous layout, the primary bedroom had been on the front of the house. Shifting it to the rear, the bedroom now has an oversized window overlooking the private backyard, where it receives much daylight.
A new sun terrace coupled with a new covered screened porch and a floor-to-ceiling glazed living area allows the clients to experience indoor/outdoor living for much of the year.
Project: House on Mitchell Lane
Architects: Robert Young Architect
General Contractor: Artisan Construction Associates
Client: Private
Photographers: Joshua McHugh
