05/15/2026
This house sits on a large agricultural conservation parcel on the North Fork of Long Island, surrounded by open farmland and the sinuous tidal marshes that wind through the coastal edge nearby. Our design draws on the rural vernacular of the area — the weathered barns, the gentle rolls of the terrain and shoreline — and on Ellsworth Kelly’s early photographs of this same territory, in which he discovered abstract form already present in the world around him. Kelly believed that nature and artifice are not opposites but two expressions of a single underlying geometry, and that conviction shaped everything about how we approached this project.
The rooflines rise and fall in gentle asymmetric curves that echo the soft topography of the surrounding fields and the organic contours of the coastal wetlands. Thermally-modified ash wall and roof cladding recalls the agricultural buildings of the area, while large expanses of glass open the interior to the warm ambient light of the North Fork sky. The program is organized as a series of distinct wings — living areas at the center, flanked by a kitchen wing, separate bedroom suites, a family library, and a two-story barn connected to the main house — that pinwheel outward to enclose a generous rear courtyard. To the east, a large raised garden bed extends out into the open field. After the house is complete, the owner will plant an orchard that will wrap the entire compound in a productive agricultural surround, thereby completing the vision of a house that belongs fully to its land.
