Project Details
Project Description
This is a residence to provide lodging and entertaining space for the owner’s family and guests. Programmatic functions include six guest bedrooms and various living spaces distributed between two structures which are joined by a central link. A stone paved upper terrace overlooks an ample pool and lower terrace accessed by two staircases with a separate pool-house to the south. A stair tower and lookout is integrated with the guest house and provides unobstructed views of the immediate site and larger estate beyond. The guest house is oriented over a gradually sloping east-west axis and sited between a complex of former dairy barns, designed in 1910 by Solon Beman, to the south and a planting field to the north. New landscape elements, intended to formally distinguish the new guest house complex include an arrangement of hedges defines the immediate site and offers privacy to the pool area while a formal grove of table-top plane trees joins the pool-house with the upper terrace. Three shallow pools on the north, recessed flush with the surrounding turf, reflect the expansively glazed north façade. One challenge of the project was to distinguish this modern house complex and simultaneously compliment the historic Beman buildings in such close proximity. Use of an exterior stucco finish and the overall form and scale of the new house is informed by the original dairy buildings while a zinc roof and expansive glass openings impart this house with a modern grammar.
