January 7, 2016

Amagansett House: 2015 BoY Winner for Beach House

Mike Brady built his TV bunch a dream house—as architects do. Off-camera, Interior Design Hall of Fame member Paul Masi has, in fact, completed two homes for his family. The current one, which he calls Elizabeth II after his wife, is a 3,200-square-foot structure in the most laid-back village of the Hamptons.

Proximity to the street required noise-reduction research, ultimately resulting in walls of insulated concrete. At 22 feet high, the tallest wall produces a muted “acoustical shadow” over the backyard, Masi explains. Meanwhile, the 20-inch thickness of all walls incorporates the permanent foam formwork around the concrete, from footing to top. To hide the foam, he customized a cladding system of cedar connected by stainless-steel clips to manage the boards’ expansion and contraction.

Variations on those clips appear inside, where they serve as robe hooks and door pulls, even hinges for an adjustable sound baffle that allows a “tuning” of the central gathering space. Musical mastery continues with the oak stair, which you can play like a xylophone. Because the treads diminish in thickness as they ascend, footfalls sound a rising scale as you climb from the basement wood shop, past the main level’s public areas, master suite, and guest room, to finally reach the children’s rooms up top.

Project Team: Doug Farrell; Peter Story; Robert Couch.

> See more from the December 2015 issue of Interior Design

Recent Projects