Montauk Beach House | Space Exploration Design

This threestory, split level house for a young family is nestled atop a densely wooded bluff in Montauk, New York, surrounded by sumac and spruce trees. Space Exploration designed an open kitchen on the top floor of the house to act as a flexible social center for the house, and to maximize the site's dramatic views of Fort Pond and Fort Pond Bay, the nearby bodies of water that dominate the view. Floor toceiling sliding doors and a large rectangular skylight flood the space with an abundance of natural light. Countertops of marinegrade Baltic birch plywood — originally intended to be temporary — eventually won over the owners, who have decided to keep them.

The kitchen table is a repurposed marble slab, which previously topped an island (since demolished) in the owner’s home in Brooklyn. The faucet and sink are by Rohl, and the brass pulls in the kitchen are actually towel holders by the Japanese brand Futagami. The owners wanted their house to have a light, unpretentious, casual feel befitting a beach house in the historically sleepy surfing town of Montauk, where it stands. To help them achieve that end, throughout the house Space Exploration employed a material palette of light, neutral colors and pale woods, which combine to create a tranquil, airy atmosphere that showcases an eclectic collection of furniture and objects, collected by the owners during travels to Morocco, Europe and Central America. A lone primitive wooden dining chair, abandoned by the house's previous owners, sits happily in the mix.

The lower floor houses the children’s bedroom, a home office, and a sunken “solarium,” or recreation room, that opens directly to the house’s sprawling grounds. Walnut shelving on this level is by Atlas Industries. The children’s bathroom floor was finished with salvaged antique encaustic tiles . Other design strategies included relocating and expanding windows in several rooms to better frame views and emit light. Window systems with minimal jamb detailing were selected to emphasize the connection between indoors and outdoors.Flooring throughout the top two floors (entry level and upstairs kitchen) is wideplank red oak, blanched and stained nearly white.

On the lower level, the floor is highquality plywood finished with glossy white epoxy. Gubi sconces illuminate the walls on the top two floors, and for the bathrooms, Space Exploration specified plumbing trims from the “Henry” collection, by Waterworks. In order to preserve an honest, informal feeling in the architecture, Space Exploration chose to expose and express the house's structure wherever possible, and conceived a new wooden stair that mirrors the simple construction vernacular of the floor framing, newly visible on the entry level.