Sands Point, New York
This was a renovation of an existing house on a property overlooking Long Island Sound not far from New York City. The house had an outmoded organization and was in poor condition, lacking both amenity and an identifiable style. What it did have was a magnificent setting, including hundred-year-old maple and oak trees and a park-like surround sloping gently down to a sandy beach. The transformation involved gutting the entire interior except the main stair, while retaining the foundation, basement, exterior bearing walls and roof.
The plan has been reorganized in a simple and traditional way: the more public family-use spaces on the first floor, the master bedrooms on the middle floor, and the children’s bedrooms on top. The double-height living room culminates in a sky lit shaft that passes through the children’s playroom piercing the roof, and connecting the house’s horizontal layers.
On the rear elevation, other vertical elements including a corkscrew slide for the children (or fire escape), the old brick chimney, and a slit window on axis with the entry, counterpoint the more pronounced horizontals of the front elevation. An open cornice line and an elongated entry terrace mediate the slope of the site. The planar expression given to the front façade by the open cornice rigged out from the old roof and to the two side elevations, by treating them like high bookends, provides a foil to the somewhat squat volumetric mass of the house, and is an architectural reference to the house’s former identity.
梅德曼住宅是理查德·迈耶在1970年代设计的一座居住类建筑，位于美国纽约州的Sands Point。该建筑是对一个旧房子的改造，保留了原有的基础、外墙和屋顶，但重新设计了内部空间。新的空间布局更加简单和传统，一楼为公共区域，二楼为主卧室，三楼为儿童卧室。双层挑高的客厅通过一个天窗与顶层的儿童游戏室相连，并穿过屋顶，打通了整栋房子的水平层。房子的后立面有一个旋转滑梯，一座古老的砖烟囱和一个与入口对准的狭长窗户，与正立面的水平线形成对比。房子的前立面和两侧立面呈平面式表达，与房子的体量形成了对比，是房子前身的一个建筑参考。该建筑的设计充分考虑了周围环境，与百年老枫树和橡树的环抱和沙滩的搭配相得益彰。