Santa Monica office Kanner Architects have designed a see-through house overlooking the ocean for Long Island, New York.
Called Long Island House, the building will be raised above the ground and have glass walls to allow views right through from every side.
A steel structure on the outside will support mesh screens for privacy.
The information that follows is from Kanner Architects:
Long Island House
The Long Island Residence sits within a densely packed stretch of beachfront property along the coast of Long Island New York. This 5500 sq. ft home with six bedrooms and seven baths overlooks mild sand dunes that frame the broad expanse of the Atlantic.
As such, views of the ocean were a priority in planning the design – which posed a question as to how to achieve views from every room from within the deep set lot. FEMA requires the house to be elevated above the ground plane creating a “house on legs” where a carport for four cars and a glass entry lobby is located. From here, a glass enclosed stair tower that wraps around a wood clad elevator takes one up to the two-level house.
The stacked wood cladding acts as a”tree trunk” that vertically connects all floors and creates an accent to the home’s crisp clean lines. The building mass is broken into four linear bars containing private and public spaces that stack upon each other in a criss-cross fashion leaving the interstitial areas to serve as decks or balconies. The first level consists of major common areas plus pool deck with the master bedroom and office on the floor above.
Expansive walls of glass create a see-through house from almost every direction even for rooms relegated towards the back. Each individual room is given multitudinous views as well. This visual transparency translates into a physical model for natural cross-ventilation in almost every direction thru-out the house. The office, considered one of the more important spaces, sits front and center with 180 degree views of the ocean while overlooking the livingroom’s 20 feet high space. Framing the entire house is a delicate steel “exo- skeleton” that ties the exterior together into an implied cubic volume. Privacy is softly regulated by shear white PVC mesh or “veils” attached within the framework, especially in the more exposed areas. At night, the house becomes a glowing white lantern with brief glimpses of domestic activity beyond.
The pool deck is integrated into the house extending out from the living room interior and has limitless views of the ocean, even though it is situated towards the back. A glass “portal” in the swimming pool wall allows views into the pool from the courtyard. Garden walls made of steel fabric woven into light-weight frames are applied to the exterior base providing protection/privacy as well as to hide the somewhat heavy nature of the structural columns.
March 13th, 2010 at 6:59 am
first impression: this screams eisenman
March 13th, 2010 at 8:45 am
Love the house but it looks like it’s been dropped on a car park (with kitch lighting). Considering it’s next to the beach couldn’t they have made more of the setting?
March 13th, 2010 at 9:02 am
paul rudolph revisited
cool yeah
March 13th, 2010 at 11:43 am
Or rather than this resembling an Eisenman design one is reminded upon further investigation of a house by the late great Paul Rudolph…
March 13th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
The problem here is weather. Not sure these “architects” took that into consideration. How do you shutter this house in case of Hurricane? I personally experienced one in the early seventies on Long Island. Nasty.
As a modern home, it’s beautiful, but, all things considered, not a win for the owner. Did they spec special glass for weather?
March 13th, 2010 at 12:50 pm
why cant one just say that it is really beautiful?
very very very few of us will create in their lifetime anything exceptional.
i think we’ve got to be a little less demanding criticizing one’s effort.
March 13th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
I am thinking more Rudolph Schindler with new technology. If some of the units had been more divided up using things like the raum plan, this would have screamed east-coast Schindler.
So with that, I now desire to see a better organized and tighter woven plan. The indoor, elevated pool looks like it has no opening to the outside and seems like a nightmare for humidity and volume control. Drawings?
March 13th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
love the facade and the steel mesh privacy shades. even if it smacks of rudolph, it does so in only the most superficial way.
the interiors are less resolved.
March 13th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
A beautiful house to look at – though not sure whether it would feel a comfortable space to live in.
March 14th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Nice design. Beautiful from the outside. Yet, it lacks some ‘classiness’ on the interior.
March 14th, 2010 at 6:44 pm
hmmm, what happened to my comment?
March 14th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
A perfect house for exhibitionists.
March 14th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
3d house.
March 14th, 2010 at 10:00 pm
beautiful house
March 15th, 2010 at 4:18 am
a dream.
March 15th, 2010 at 4:22 am
nice. only thing i dont like……
the image texture with the vines. its really obvious. should have been photoshopped.
other than that, lovely design
March 15th, 2010 at 4:50 am
Looks good but I don’t see them being able to keep everything so thin… and can that pass energy rating needs etc?? In Australia we need 5-star… that wouldn’t be close at all!
I wonder if it would ‘wobble’ or move as you walked around it being so flimsy looking… like a steel staircase for example.
March 15th, 2010 at 7:30 am
Not for me. Too see thru, but would love to see others enjoying it.
March 15th, 2010 at 9:54 am
I like to walk about my house naked, so this design isn’t for me :p
March 15th, 2010 at 10:59 am
No need for a plush interior with those views (see entry by Modular), that would rather defeat the object. Perhaps a choice of material for the panels, to correspond with the “four linear bars”? I would happily live there so I must be a fan.
March 15th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
for energy efficiency, i’d assume that this is on LI and is a vacation house and used primarily in the summer when you’d probably try to go passive.
all the structure seems optimistically thin though. have a feeling it’ll come out beefier than anticipated once the client sees how much doing structure that delicate might cost…
March 15th, 2010 at 4:05 pm
when you look at the elevation/rendering and you catch a glimpse of the surrounding context, this house just doesn’t belong…
March 15th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
woooooooooooow
March 16th, 2010 at 9:59 am
bit cold in winter i reckon
June 22nd, 2010 at 5:18 am
greenstar sucks if it puts down such a beautiful house :P