CITATION

Submitted by Steven Harris Architects, the House on Lake Maitland in Winter Park, Florida, is a modern courtyard house that utilizes the challenges of its site to create opportunities to enjoy and preserve its lakefront setting. Once deemed unbuildable, the site sloped significantly and was crowned by a group of live oak trees. In response, the major volumes of the house encircle the oaks and protect their root systems and the house is partially buried into the highest elevation of the site, creating a green roof along the street.

The home contains several protected courtyards which open the major rooms to sunlight and expansive lake views. Generous eaves provide passive shade and extend the living space outdoors. The home is a single story, preserving neighbors’ lake views while providing a stealthy, almost submerged sense of privacy. This low profile, along with the planted roofscape, offer the neighborhood a park-like break in the conventional fabric of more imposing suburban homes nearby. The home has become a stop on local tours and generated interest in the town.

The stucco volumes of concrete masonry belies the complex systems at work supporting the site’s ecosystem. Portions of the house are cantilevered or raised on grade beams, treading lightly near sensitive tree roots and permitting tightly-choreographed stormwater management through grading. Local crushed shell paving, pervious wood decks, and bioswales planted with native grasses maximize runoff absorption and slow runoff and erosion.

New live oak plantings dot the landscape, expanding the existing ecology and preserving it for the future.

This project best (left the word “best” out) fulfills the Ecosystem, Well-being, and Water criteria of the AIA Framework for Design Excellence and provides an example of how architecture can respect its clients, ecosystem, and community.

In the mid seventeenth century, early settlers of Montauk, New York established what is now the oldest working cattle ranch in America. Their remnants survive today in the form of horse stables, barns, and workers’ cottages. One such cottage sat near the top of a hill with almost three hundred sixty degree views of the nearby lake, ocean, sound, and nature preserves. Its new owners sought to maintain the existing structure’s unpretentious appearance and the pastoral landscape, while creating a larger house, known as Signal Hill, suiting the modern expectations of year-round living for a family of five.

Submitted by Bates Masi + Architects, the house structure references traditional livestock pens built from glacial rubble that meander through the local landscape. Its stone walls extend to the top of the first floor, organizing its spaces and providing a base for the second story. The walls carve into the sloping meadow, reducing the apparent size of the home when viewed from the exterior. Some of the walls reach out and taper into the ground, cutting strategic sightlines into the hilltop and linking the house with the pool. These apertures brighten interior spaces, provide access to the lawns and meadows, and frame views of the lake and preserves. They carry from exterior, through the interior, and back to exterior. Sliding glass walls disappear into recesses at the central sightline overlooking the lake, providing an uninterrupted connection between east and west, sunrise and sunset.

Perched atop the stone walls sit two simple shingled “cottages” reminiscent of the property’s original structures. Because the first floor is largely concealed they appear as small houses lightly set on the hill when viewed from the road and driveway approach below.

RESIDENTIAL SINGLE FAMILY DETACHED, 2,500 SQUARE FEET AND OVER

SIGNAL HILL MONTAUK, NEW YORK

SUBMITTED BY: BATES MASI + ARCHITECTS