Watermill House by Office of Architecture

Watermill House is a modern house in New York that is included zinc-clad volumes: the Public wing, the Guest wing and the Family wing.

Architect: Office of Architecture
Location: Long Island, New York, USA
Year: 2016
Team: Aniket Shahane, Ivan Kostic, Tristan Walker, Valentin Bansac, Stephen Maher, Edward Simpson, Joshua Eager
Collaborator: Asheshh Saheba
Area: 6000 sqf.
Photography: Rafael Gamo

From the architects: When our clients approached us to discuss the feasibility of designing a 6000 square foot house in Southampton, New York, our immediate concern was that the lot – located in a FEMA floodplain, on a property that is approximately 50% unbuildable wetlands – wouldn’t deliver the square footage or the living spaces required to create a ‘Hamptons Home’. Rather than fight the constraints imposed by the land, we saw this as an opportunity to capture a variety of spaces that could exist under, over, and between the building and the landscape.

The design of this project is literally ‘high-end’. Three zinc-clad volumes – the Public wing, the Guest wing, and the Family wing – elevate all the heated areas and critical infrastructure above the floodplain. These volumes organize the primary indoor areas such as living rooms, bedrooms, baths and mechanical rooms, while interstitial spaces between the house and ground foster a series of outdoor rooms including a carport, a courtyard, a pool pavilion, a terrarium, and roof terraces.

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