Bold and Eccentric Six Square House Project in Long Island

The bone-white beaches and cerulean blue waters in the Hamptons can be a little distracting, but away from the daze, you’ll also catch a glimpse of an untold number of farmhouses that populate this rural part of America. Across clustered villages at the very eastern end of Long Island, the area hints at its rich agricultural history.

Playing on this area’s vernacular, a troop of New York-based architects, Young Projects, has redefined the modern-day barn, a bold and eclectic mix of architectural expressions, in their latest project, the Six Square house. It willfully sits on a 3,500 sq ft land and is a family home that consists of six gabled volumes. This elegantly discerning 3,500 square foot house has 2 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a kitchen, multiple living spaces, an outdoor porch, and a garage.

It has a plan that is " ...a clustered grid, which sets up an interesting dialogue between the spaces", says Bryan Young, the principal, and founder of Young Projects. Five of these tessellating modules collectively form a home enclosing a triangular courtyard, while the sixth module sits a little further from the rest to accommodate the garage. Approaching this scheme from its polished concrete path, you’re hailed by two symmetrical gables that welcome you to a vogueish home.

These six 24’x24’ gabled modules are arranged to position the roof ridges and create continuity from one module to the next. In distinction, each gable’s roof eaves flow up and down, resulting in a wave of unexpected sightlines across the home's exterior and interior. The home is draped in an ash gray, slatted Accoya wood, whose grooves enhance its roofscape's dynamic edges and arcs.

Interestingly the completion of the Six Square house coincides with Young Projects’ latest addition to the lot’s historic 1850 farmhouse, located right in front of this property, with a new pool house, ipe deck, and a gunite pool at the property’s rear. Right at the lot’s center, the Six Square house rightfully earns the nucleus position of the property as well as the primary on-site residence of the client, with the farmhouse as the guest home.

The slatted roof aligns into the slatted exterior walls that create long, vertical grooves that begin at the roof ridge and cascade into the ground. The roof and exterior walls are constructed from Western Red Cedar rain-screen and charred, stained, and sealed Accoya rain-screen. Both are low-maintenance and durable engineered woods that maintain the farmhouse’s historic cedar facade distinctly in contemporary.

The six gable modules of the Six Square house tessellate centrally around its triangular courtyard to offer a compelling visual balance between the symmetry and asymmetry of the home, depending on the occupant’s point of reference in the house. Young Projects used the hybrid roofscape that combines the curving eaves and aligned roof ridges to enhance this dichotomy.

This tessellated arrangement creates a strategic and programmatic division across the house, with each module loosely tied to a different use: living, kitchen, main bedroom, secondary bedroom, porch, and garage. Other than encircling the lush triangular courtyard, it also takes advantage of the surrounding landscape, with each of the modules offering a different view of its poised surrounding.

Each living area is linked to the kitchen. “The spaces within the house both respect and blur across the modules,” says Marciniak, Partner and Studio Director at Young Projects. He further adds, “The connections between modules generate the most interesting interior spaces as well as the interesting roofline geometry."

The ceiling rolls through the common area and is marked by a ruled geometry; the wood framing is not bent; rather, each of the straight rafters rotates slightly to its adjacent to develop a curving surface in all its aggregate.

Overall, the Six Square House strikes an innovative balance between elegance and its hybrid nature, across both the interiors and exteriors: “On one hand, the design of the house is governed by its geometric logic, and on the other, the design reframes and connects back to the overall site.” explains Young.

Also check out the exceptional, Studio FH’s Gahinga Batwa Village, an iconic structure becoming a beacon of hope for a marginalized community in Uganda.

Project Information

Architects: Young Projects

Location: Bridge Hampton, USA

Year Completed: 2021

Structural Engineers: Silman

Landscape Architect: Coen+ Partners

Contractor: Taconic Builders