After studying architecture in college and working as a designer in New York, Dana Sottile had clear ideas about what she wanted when she set out to design her own house in Garrison, N.Y.
But she also knew the process of building a home could be so frustrating and unforgiving that she didn’t want to go it alone. She wanted to collaborate with an architect who would be willing to not only brainstorm ideas and details but also handle the fundamentals of meeting building codes and coordinating construction.
“I studied architecture as a graduate student,” at the University of California at Berkeley, said Ms. Sottile, 65, an independent designer and artist. “But I didn’t become licensed because I felt that the architecture profession encompassed a lot that I wasn’t interested in doing.”
She and her husband, Kevin Reymond, 69, who works in finance, already owned a second home in Garrison as a weekend escape from their primary home in Manhattan, but they dreamed of having a house right on the Hudson River.
In 2019, they heard about a property comprising three lots on a sliver of land between the river and railway track. It was high enough for a home above the Federal Emergency Management Agency flood zone, so they pounced and negotiated a deal to buy it for about $1.2 million.
There were two existing houses on the land, only one of which had electricity. They moved into the habitable home temporarily and snaked an extension cord to the other building to use it as a makeshift office as they began planning a new house to replace both structures.
“My vision was to engage with this beautiful landscape,” Ms. Sottile said. She also wanted to have a glass-walled “wow space” as the living room, which would provide unfettered views up and down the river. From there, she envisioned a series “of smaller, intimate spaces, that would be cozier,” as well as a separate, smaller building that would function as an art and design studio for Ms. Sottile and a gym for Mr. Reymond.
Looking for someone to work with her on the project, Ms. Sottile hired — and fired — three different architecture firms. “I had to let people go because they really didn’t want to work with me,” she said, adding that she became frustrated by professionals who seemed more interested in their own ideas than about what she wanted the house to be. “They really didn’t want me to engage.”
Trying again, she interviewed two more architects in February 2020 and found a willing partner in New York-based Jeff Jordan. Mr. Jordan had also studied architecture at the University of California at Berkeley and had previously designed a house for one of Ms. Sottile’s classmates. When they met in person, it seemed like a perfect match.
“Dana came to us with a pretty strong idea of what she wanted,” Mr. Jordan said. “So it became about listening to her and then refining what she had done.”
To collaborate during the pandemic, they met in Ms. Sottile’s makeshift office, seated across from each other at a long table, wearing masks.
“The long view of the river is really obvious and really dramatic,” Mr. Jordan said. “But what we added to her plan was this idea of internal courtyard spaces,” with sightlines that would provide close-up views of trees and plants from inside the house.
The 2,251-square-foot, single-story house they arrived at is essentially a box with two cutaways for small courtyards. A third courtyard separates the house from an 899-square-foot, two-story studio and gym building.
Ms. Sottile and Mr. Jordan kept the material palette simple. Beyond large expanses of glass, they clad the house in slender tan-colored brick from the Italian manufacturer S.Anselmo and brown-painted aluminum, and they used smaller windows and additional insulation on the back of the house to help soundproof it against passing trains. In the living room, the exterior brick runs to the interior of the house, where it wraps a wall with a fireplace.
A constellation of tiny recessed lights spreads across both the living room ceiling and roof overhang outside, visually uniting indoor and outdoor spaces separated by floor-to-ceiling glass.
To deliver on Ms. Sottile and Mr. Jordan’s desire for interesting views both near and far, the New York-based landscape architecture firm Terrain Work populated the yard with tall grasses and ferns; birch, serviceberry and Japanese maple trees; and boulders that were saved during excavation.
“The landscape isn’t a one-liner,” said Theodore Hoerr, a partner at Terrain Work. “We were trying to create a whole array of different spatial experiences, with aspects of prospect and refuge to make people feel comfortable.”
After demolishing the old houses in March 2021, the project took more than three years for RTH Building Company to complete, as surprises such as having to rebuild part of the riverbank slowed things down. The total cost was about $5 million, and Ms. Sottile and Mr. Reymond moved in last September.
But they have no doubt that it was worth the wait, and the expense. “This house has changed our lives,” Ms. Sottile said, noting that they can’t help but smile every time they wake up there. “It’s enormously gratifying.”
The post The Dream? A Second Home, Right on the Hudson. appeared first on New York Times.
