Dwell

Dwell

Second Look at Bates Masi's Re-Cover House in Amagansett

Tue

Mar

Back in February, we noted that Bates Masi + Architects' Re-Cover House in Amagansett would be profiled in the April 2009 issue of Dwell . The project's interiors are actually featured on the magazine's front cover and Dwell 's article is a must-read; it details the history of the house (designed by Harry Bates in 1967 as a family beach retreat) and interviews owners Joe Dolce and Jonathan Burnham, who "bought the house because we liked it- we didn't want to change it." The 1400-square-foot Re-Cover House, or Dolce & Burnham Residence, incorporates material recycled from the original 1970s house to blend old with new; cyprus wall boards and cedar wood decking were preserved and transformed into new siding, stair treads, and risers. You'll recall that the project also earned a 2008 AIA Peconic Chapter Merit Award for Architecture / Renovations & Additions. You can find the Dolce & Burnham Residence on page 82 of Dwell 's "Time and Again" feature, which also details two other modern renovations to homes in Portland and Toronto.

Bates Masi + Architects' Re-Cover House: Amagansett, New York

Mon

Feb

by Stephen Del Percio

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We're still tracking what's happening with the Sag Harbor-based firm's 132 North Main Street project, but in the meantime want to point you to Bates Masi + Architects' Re-Cover House, which will be featured in the April 2009 issue of Dwell magazine. The firm actually designed the house nearly 35 years ago as a Long Island vacation home in Amagansett but recently executed a renovation and addition for a new set of owners; the project earned a 2008 AIA Peconic Chapter Merit Award for Architecture/Renovations & Additions. In order to boost the house's square footage, its original south wall and deck were removed but cyprus wall boards and cedar wood decking therefrom were preserved and recycled into new siding, stair treads, scrim material, and risers. By preserving such materials, the firm was able not only to complete the project by using very few new materials, but also preserve the original design intent of the house across both the renovated interior walls and exterior cladding, which was almost completely constructed originally from twelve-inch wide cypruss clapboards.

BIM Meets Prefab: Suburban Prototype Home, Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey

Fri

Dec

by Stephen Del Percio

2 comments

We hear and read a great deal about the promises- and potential pitfalls- of BIM in the context of its use as a tool for sustainable design. Accordingly, we were interested to read in the most recent issue of Dwell about the Suburban Prototype Home in Bergen County. Designed by Hoboken-based Nastasi Architects for clients in the New York City suburb of Woodcliff Lake, the designers used a BIM model to successfully execute the curves and angles of a steel and glass addition to a traditional suburban ranch residence. Essentially, BIM is colloquial for advanced computer modeling design programs that allow designers to create 3-D models of a project that are loaded with extremely detailed information, at a level of precision that reduces construction time and waste and assists in the type of integrated design necessary for a truly sustainable project.

For the Suburban Prototype, Nastasi was able to transmit electronic drawings to its detailer and fabricator that set forth both geometric dimensions for the project and details on the strength of materials. The firm was also able to build a model of the property’s energy consumption by loading data on the angle of the sun, prevailing wind speeds, and average temperatures for the exact coordinates of the project site. The drawings sent to the fabricator were extremely precise, allowing it to manufacture the addition’s structural elements at comparable cost to conventional construction. John Nastasi told Dwell that he hopes to install similar types of additions on hundreds of homes, calling BIM modeling “more flexible and adaptable than other prefab methods that rely on mass-produced components and materials that are put together the same way over and over again.”

The premise of BIM- a 3-D design model that can be transmitted from architect, to client, to fabricator- offers sustainable designers an unprecedented level of control over their projects.