Bayside

Manhasset, NY, United States

Add To Collection

Other Projects by Materia Prima Studio

Add To Collection

Forest Retreat

Bayside

Manhasset, NY, United States

Firm

Materia Prima Studio

Type

Residential › Private House

STATUS

Concept

YEAR

2025

SIZE

5000 sqft - 10,000 sqft

BUDGET

Undisclosed

Honor Award recipient, 2023 AIA Northeastern Pennsylvania

In a coastal metro New York village on Manhasset Bay this property was selected by a Manhattan couple seeking to return to their childhood roots for their retirement years. Primary goals for the project included finding a location within walking distance of the Long Island Railroad and to the village’s outdoor spaces where numerous social events are held around the calendar, a home that can host small groups of family and guests, and later provide comfortable and private accommodations for live-in caregivers should this become necessary while aging in this beloved place.

To serve those goals, the property found and purchased after a years-long search is a ten-minute walk from the train station and the village green space. Programmatically, the house is arranged such that the lower level may be occupied by guests or caregivers independently from the owners whose living, working, and sleeping spaces are all located on the upper level, made accessible by an elevator in addition to the stair.

Conceptually, the house is composed of a grouping of stone-clad forms on the ground separated by glazed voids and spanned over by a timber framed upper structure whose shapes orient the interior and outdoor spaces toward elevated long views. The house makes a transition from the street side to the waterfront both in its experiential and tectonic nature, transforming from a relatively staid, non-edgy, and calm presence facing the neighborhood into a more exuberant and expressive collection of structured indoor-outdoor places from which to enjoy daily life in the bayside environment.

The landscape design follows suit by employing a more formal suburban woodland ecology on the street side that morphs to a naturalized coastal ecology surrounding the house and an outdoor activity space on the bay side.

Providing a variety of private, intimate places within this neighborhood of closely spaced buildings was achieved by arranging the house’s forms to create sheltered spaces set into the edges of the architecture that will gather and connect activity to the landscape and the water. To capture the beautiful sunset views over the opposite shore and mouth of the bay, the northwesterly-projecting wing of the upper level is rotated slightly, reaching out toward the water, tilting up to the sky, and extending beyond the tree line and neighboring structures for an unobstructed and elevated perch.

Materially, the design is composed of six major components: mosaic granite-clad forms, glulam timber framing, large-scale shingled cedar boards, cedar sun and privacy screens and trim, metal roofing, and glass. Within a village that controls its traditional, or neo-traditional, architectural aesthetic with a design review board charged as stewards of their built environment, the street façade has been crafted using this limited natural palette of materials, assembled in recognizable but non-traditional ways, and predominately with a low, subdued proportionality.