How this ultra-challenging barrier island site was addressed in a novel and environmentally-sustainable fashion
by Matt Scanlon
The astonishing site of this beach house in East Quogue, perched on a thin strip of Barrier Island off Dune Road, was matched very nearly in its overwhelming scenery by the number of challenges involved in building upon it. Home approved sites this close to the beach are a highly-coveted rarity (typically, permits are approved only when there are existing structures on the site that need to be either renovated or torn down), but they come with a cost—namely an exhaustive permit process, enhanced in this case by the beach being nesting grounds for the endangered piping plover. A contentious issue in the Hamptons, to put it mildly, the endangered bird species is granted a wide berth during migratory summer months as far as undisturbed beach access is concerned, so when conceiving a house squarely within flight lanes, Joseph Tanney, AIA, of Resolution 4 Architecture, had to work around an intimidatingly narrow October-to-April construction window.
If the home was to be executed in typical fashion, namely stick-framed and built from scratch, such a schedule would have represented a near impossibility, but one of Tanney’s specialties and passions came to the rescue—a modular approach to custom design in which the 2,200-square-foot structure would be made of prefab Cartesian blocks.
“We call it Modern Modular,” Tanney explained. “Which is both more simple than one thinks and more complex than anyone imagines [laughs]. Essentially, we take prefabricated blocks and organize them, well…not unlike how one would build a Lego house. In this case, there are two blocks for each floor level.”
Produced by Simplex Homes in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the modules were an ideal choice for this site for a variety of reasons.
“One, it gives us the best bang for the buck. It’s the highest-value proposition we’ve found in terms of building a custom modern home,” said Tanney. “Also, we found there is a much higher degree of predictability in terms of how much it’s going to cost and how long it’s going to take, and both were absolutely critical in this instance.”
Whereas scratch-built homes in this section of the Hamptons could easily fetch $1,000-and-up per square foot in construction costs, modular building was better than 50% cheaper, and in one of the most highly coveted real estate markets in the world, that made the entire project possible for its young owner family.
Quick to blast any notions of prefab construction being a low-rent and low-flexibility method of execution, Tanney explained that such living spaces actually offer an inordinate amount of improvisation (“It’s a system, not a formula,” as he put it), and was perfectly suited for a project that demanded long sight lines and an interior layout that makes transitions from indoors to outdoors almost imperceptible. A series of sliding glass doors, for example, not only allows residents to move easily between living spaces laterally, but also vertically…with a nearly uninterrupted walking journey to the expansive roof deck, complete with fireplace.
“Some of that indoor-outdoor blurring occurs visually via the floor-to-ceiling glass,” Tanney said. “But also with the application of a wood ceiling that goes from the inside to the outside. At every opportunity, we wanted to take advantage of the incredible views, and when you are in the master bedroom upstairs, the sensation is fantastically like being right on the beach.”
Modular design not only addressed the site and time challenges of the four bedroom, 2.5-bath home—complete with private master suite with its own bath—it also neatly fit into Tanney and his firm’s passion for environmentally sustainable building.
“If you see a house being built stick built on site, there’s inevitably a big dumpster sitting out front because of all the waste that goes into such a project. But you don’t see this with modular design. The pieces are made to order, and anything that’s cut is usually reused,” he said, adding that since the firm is also responsible for the installation of all finishes—including flooring, cabinetry, and appliances—these avenues of waste reduction are only enhanced.
In fact, a relatively low level of scrap was only the beginning of the environmental considerations at work here. Built to Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) standards, the house features high-performance, hurricane-resistant windows, no volatile organic compounds in its paint, sustainably-grown wood for both the cabinets and bamboo floors, and low-flow plumbing fixtures, combined with something the architect smilingly termed, “an almost unceasing natural ventilation system.”
Pile-driven more than 20 feet into a sand dune, the home survived Hurricane Sandy with barely a scratch, even after an adjoining home was not only destroyed, but had its debris blown into the side of the structure.
“Really, the only visible effect of the storm was that the dune itself had been washed away, so the home was positioned ten feet into the air on its piles,” Tanney recalled. “The task then was simply to rebuild the dune. That, too, is an important piece of sustainability…a house that’s going to endure for a long time.”
Resolution: 4 Architecture
150 West 28th Street / 212.675.9266 / re4a.com