Amagansett Dunes

Bates Masi + Architects’s portfolio is brimming with lush homes on New York’s Long Island, among other tony locales. But far from being just another feather in the firm’s cap, the Amagansett Dunes house shows how a culture of research and innovation can make each commission a new exploration in form and function.

In Amagansett, Bates Masi’s client had acquired a beachfront site in a 1950s development of small beachside cottages, which is “a little removed from the large-scale, fast-paced Hamptons lifestyle” that people most often associate with the area, says principal Paul Masi. Not only were the clients looking to minimize their footprint in terms of the size of the home, which tops out at a modest 1,725 square feet; they were also looking to minimize energy consumption. “This is not an air-conditioned home,” Masi says. “We even had discussions about whether there would be a dishwasher.”

The dishwasher won out, but it was the commitment to cooling by passive ventilation that drove much of the design—and provided room for invention. To control the sun and maintain privacy, but also allow for cooling breezes, the architects looked hard for a screening solution for the windward, western, street-side façade. Working with a local sailmaker, they devised a series of louvers with twisted pieces of canvas anchored to an aluminum frame that, thanks to extensive computer modeling to account for sun and wind, were carefully crafted to block the maximum amount of direct sun to the interior to limit heat gain.

“We wanted a material that was organic-looking,” Masi says, but the right type of canvas was crucial because of the potential for noise from oscillation in the wind and fraying. Field testing was key: “We made full-scale mock-ups,” Masi says, “and the sailmaker mounted one to the roof of his car and drove around with it for four months” to prove its durability in high winds.

Behind those shutters are nearly 40 operable windows that allow the owners to tune the movement of air through the house. An operable, full-height glass wall anchors the leeward east end of the main living–dining–kitchen space to a terrace that overlooks the beach, and opening more or fewer windows behind the louvers changes the draw of air through the house. The north and south elevations were kept largely opaque to preserve privacy from neighbors and limit heat gain.

A guest suite and kids bedroom round out the first floor; two baths and bedrooms upstairs—the latter with operable glazed walls and glass safety railings—are topped by a roof deck with views of the parabolic sand dunes that give the home its name.

Veiled, yet immensely open, Amagansett Dunes is an inventive retreat by a firm whose exquisite detailing is rivaled only by the landscapes it designs for, and is inspired by.

Project: Amagansett Dunes, Amagansett, N.Y.

Architect: Bates Masi + Architects, Sag Harbor, N.Y.
General Contractor:Cooper Construction
Structural Engineer: Steven L. Maresca
Landscape Designers: Bates Masi + Architects and Greg Condon
Living Space 1,725 square feet
Cost: Withheld