Wuehrer House | East Hampton, New York | 2018

Architects: Engelking Architect
Architects of Record: Kirsten Youngren
Client: Private
General Contractor: IC2 Technologies Inc.
Structural Engineers: Stutzki Engineering
Photographers: Nic Lehoux

Located in East Hampton, New York, on an expansive and secluded site, the Wuehrer house is surrounded by nature preserves. The house is accessed by a private gravel path and is nestled in a clearing within Stony Hill Forest. The site is gently sloped, covered almost exclusively with white oaks, a few eastern red cedars, and an occasional pitch pine.

To celebrate this serene location, the design of the house mutes architectural metaphors, avoids overt symbolism, and conceives of a contemplative structure that is simple, discreet, rational, and generously open to the surrounding landscape.

The house is made from a unique, repetitive module. This module is itself dematerialized, reduced down to its outer frame. This subtractive strategy highlights the tactile qualities of the carefully curated palette of materials: unadorned wood, glass, and concrete. With its simple geometry and minimal use of materials, natural light becomes the prominent element defining the space, celebrating the ever-changing seasons and the remarkable wooded vistas.

The design of the house balances the use of modular fabrication and the craft of traditional construction methods. The structure is made of a high-quality, high-strength Southern Yellow Pine, laminated and milled into beams and columns with highly-precise profiles. An innovative Canadian manufacturer was one of the few companies that were able to combine facade mullions with the columns of the house into one slender glulam element. The choice of timber also solves the question of interior finishes, letting the structural material speak for itself, and provides a warm counterpoint to the minimal design.

Passive environmental strategies were employed to create a low-energy house, including a heated floor system and exterior automated wood blinds on the west facade. Natural air ventilation in every room and cross-ventilation between opposite facades keeps the need for air conditioning to a minimum.