“Everything about this house is the outdoors and the views and the water,” says Kligerman Architecture & Design founder and DLN Fellow Tom Kligerman of a home his firm completed recently in Water Mill, New York. Situated on a point surrounded by water, the home is designed to maximize its surroundings, and to continue the element of wonder with which guests are confronted upon arrival. “You come down this little road and suddenly it opens up and you’re looking at the ocean,” says Tom.
To continue that sense of discovery indoors, the Kligerman team created a sort of serpentine layout that hugs the coastline, cutting into both interior and exterior walls wherever possible to bring light indoors and open up the view from every room of the house. “It’s a house that is—Swiss cheese isn’t the right word with all the holes in it—but it’s a house that really puts together three dimensionally, almost like a puzzle, indoor and outdoor space,” says Tom. “There are porches on the first floor, second floor, there are porches on the front and the back. There are porches that don’t even have views.”
DLN Partner Reilly Architectural proved an invaluable source in the execution of these myriad porches and doors; Kligerman’s team found themselves sourcing every type of window, from classic double-hungs to oversized picture windows.
“The house I think has one foot in the traditional world and a foot—at least a toe—in the modern world,” says Tom, who looked to both the Shingle Style work of Stanford White and the glass-facaded buildings of Philip Johnson and Mies van der Rohe for inspiration in its design.
The result is a sublime execution of the boundary-pushing shingle style for which Tom has become known, a thoroughly site-specific project where nature and architecture live in complete harmony.
“We’re lucky that all the homes we design are in beautiful areas,” quips Tom. “I often joke that I have this incredible job because I never go someplace boring or ugly.”
Explore the full project in the video above.