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Bates Masi + Architects LLC, a full-service architectural firm with roots in New York City and the East End of Long Island for over 45 years, responds to each project with extensive research in related architectural fields, material, craft and environment for unique solutions as varied as the individuals or groups for whom they are designed. The focus is neither the size nor the type of project but the opportunity to enrich lives and enhance the environment. The attention to all elements of design has been a constant in the firm’s philosophy. Projects include urban and suburban residences, schools, offices, hotels, restaurants, retail and furniture in the United States, Central America and the Caribbean. The firm has received 43 design awards since 2003 and has been featured in national and international publications including The New York Times, New York Magazine, Architectural Digest, Architectural Record, Metropolitan Home, and Dwell. Residential Architect Magazine selected Bates Masi one of their 50 Architect’s We Love. A gallery exhibition in May 2010 featured the firm’s earlier work from 1960-70.

 

Paul Masi spent childhood summers in Montauk and currently resides in Amagansett. He received a Bachelor of Architecture from Catholic University and a Masters of Architecture from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. He worked at Richard Meier & Partners before joining this firm in 1998.

Harry Bates, a resident of East Hampton, received a Bachelor of Architecture from North Carolina State University. After ten years with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, he was in private practice in New York City for 17 years before moving the firm to Southampton on the East End in 1980. Our offices are currently located in Sag Harbor with plans to relocate to a new LEED Certified office building of our own design in East Hampton.

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Many-Fold

Lot size: 2.9 acres

Building size: 9,000 sq. ft.

Location: Sagaponack, NY

Program: Single Family Residence

Landscape Architect: Stephen Stimson Associates

Located between the Atlantic Ocean and a freshwater pond, this residence is for an adventurous couple who frequently travel with their four young sons. They wanted a house with a lawn, a swimming pool and a tennis court for their family and friends on a site with a limited building envelope due to coastal and wetland zoning. Restricted by a large program in a small building envelope, the design focuses on a study of relationships between large and small house parts and spaces that reveals a nesting of architectural components for an experience of “rediscovery".

The house and landscape features are efficiently woven together in response to the zoning regulations while allowing the site perimeter for dune restoration with native vegetation. As part of the entry sequence, a staircase becomes stepped planters gradually rising from the grade level for a seamless approach to the elevated house. The roof surfaces of the main house and the garage become vegetated roofs with plant shadows cast into the kids’ bathrooms through operable skylights. Stepped planters and vegetated roofs allow the discovery of ornamental qualities in utilitarian components.

The minimal footprint of the house necessitated that spaces be expandable and adjustable for various occasions and

events. The media room and wine rack walls lower into the basement, each merging two smaller rooms into spaces for larger gatherings. The sliding glass doors of the first and second floors pocket into adjacent walls, dematerializing the separation between the double height living area and the landscape from ocean to pond.

The simplicity of the rectangular form of the house opened an opportunity to articulate its shell as a nesting of materials: the cor-ten steel, wood and stone veneers and glass panels with a wood screen inner layer. The glass panels, the most intricate of the materials, function as exterior siding as well as windows in some areas. They permit views to the exterior, provide shade from solar rays and privacy for interior spaces. The materials embedded in the house facades attain various spatial qualities at different locations and times of day, allowing discovery of multiple characters of the house.

The design limitations placed by the zoning regulations enabled an articulation of nesting within surfaces and spaces, encouraging the owners to explore the house for rediscovery.

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