Contemporary Modern

Contemporary modern is the current descendant of the South Fork's postwar modern houses. It uses glass walls, cantilevers, concrete and metal, and long, simple volumes. The strongest examples here do not ignore local building traditions. They abstract them: a barn becomes a long twin-gabled shed, and a shingled lookout becomes a cantilevered glass room clad in cedar. Whether a design like that can be built depends heavily on where the parcel is.

How to recognize it

• Abstracted local forms. Gables without eaves or trim, extruded to unusual lengths. Herzog & de Meuron's Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill is 614 feet long and under 100 feet wide, with twin gables "like two fused-together barns," in Architectural Record's description.
• Glass where the view is. Whole elevations glazed toward the water or the light. The Bates Masi Amagansett Residence's cantilevered upper floor is glass on its west and south sides.
• Inverted plans. Living rooms upstairs for the view, bedrooms below. The same Amagansett house puts its kitchen, living and dining rooms on the upper floor.
• Materials. Rough concrete, metal roofs, unpainted wood, and cedar shingle used as a modern skin rather than with traditional trim.
• Outdoor rooms built in. Roof gardens, deep eaves and covered porches folded into the main volume.

Documented examples

• Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill (Herzog & de Meuron; completed November 2012). A public building, open to visitors. The architects took the Long Island artist's studio, "a house shape and skylights," as the model. It stands in a meadow on a former agricultural site. Executive architect: Douglas Moyer Architect of Sag Harbor. See Water Mill.
• Amagansett Residence (Bates Masi + Architects, published 2017). A 2,300-square-foot house across from the Amagansett Life-Saving Station, a former Coast Guard station now open as a museum. Like the landmark, it is clad in cedar shingles. Its 700-square-foot upper story cantilevers past the floor below as a lookout. The architect called it "more reinterpretation than mimicry." See Amagansett.

What the review codes allow

The South Fork's codes do not ban modern design, but they do not treat it the same way everywhere.

• Town of East Hampton. Where the Architectural Review Board has jurisdiction, it is told to encourage gabled roofs and cedar shingles. The same section says "individual initiative and experimentation are not to be discouraged" unless necessary, and that review is not to prohibit or unduly restrict alternative building types, materials or methods. Outside historic districts, the board may disapprove a design only if the applicant failed to take reasonable account of the code's stated considerations.
• Town historic districts. The Amagansett Historic District guidelines encourage contemporary designs that respond to the district and say they "are not required to imitate the historic styles." They still have to match setbacks, spacing, scale, height range, roof form and materials. The Montauk Association guidelines similarly invite a new design built on the principles of the historic houses rather than a copy.
• Village of Sag Harbor. The Board of Historic Preservation and Architectural Review can disapprove a design for "excessive dissimilarity," including volume, floor area, height, materials and quality of design. Meeting the dimensional zoning table is expressly not enough. Solar and alternative-energy equipment must not be visible from an adjacent street or property.
• Village of East Hampton. New construction in the four historic districts must be compatible with what is already there, judged by facade proportion, window arrangement, roof slope and spacing.
• Town of Southampton. The Landmarks and Historic Districts Board's review is tied to landmarks, districts and pre-1941 buildings. Replacing a pre-1941 house with a modern one brings the demolition before the board.

Read together, the district guidelines favor contemporary designs that reinterpret local forms (gables, shingle, porches, setbacks) over ones that ignore them. Outside the districts and the boards' listed project classes, style review may not apply at all; zoning, coastal and sanitary limits are the first check. See Renovating and rebuilding.

What the assessment roll does not tell you

New York's style list has a "Contemporary" code, but it is a catch-all that can cover a 1970s builder house and a 2020s architect-designed one. On the South Fork records the Research Desk has reviewed, the style field reads "Unknown." Whether a house is serious contemporary architecture, and by whom, is a matter for the press record, the architect and the permit set.

Year built is also blunt. The State manual separates actual year built, effective year built and year remodeled. A modern house built on the foundation or partial frame of an older one may carry the older date. Check the certificate of occupancy history.

Related: Postwar Modernism, New Traditional, all style guides.