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DESCRIPTION
The Huxford Residence comprises an existing Arts-and-Crafts cottage and a sixteen hundred square-foot addition located off the shoreline of Horseshoe Cove on the Long Island Sound.
The addition, which translates the vernacular of the original building into a contemporary idiom, contains a bedroom and living room sited for optimum views of the water and surrounding environs, while the original building houses the kitchen, dining room and library.
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In order to preserve a mature gingko, magnolia and rhododendron on the site, the addition is set fifteen feet away from the existing building at a ninety-degree angle from its southeastern corner. The magnolia serves as an internal coordinate point for the entire site - a vector projecting from the garden court through the additionıs main living area toward the Long Island Sound. It also determines the placement of a second-story bedroom window, which is delicately framed by magnolia branches.
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The two buildings are linked structurally by a connecting corridor, and visually by the use of materials similar to the original residence - stucco finishes, steel windows and copper roofs.
The corridor is composed of five wood-framed glass doors, measuring eight-by-twelve feet, on one side and a heavy stucco wall on the other. The glass doors face the garden court, opening the corridor to light and air in a literal and figurative sense. The stucco wall runs from original cottage, where its axis metaphorically penetrates the south wall and divides the kitchen from the dining area, to the southwestern corner of the additionıs two-story stair tower. The wall is punctured by small windows precisely sited to take in vistas of the Long Island Sound and an estate house on an adjoining property, while less desirable views are deliberately obscured. The windows, which include a right-angled pair that evoke the site plan, are set against the extreme horizontality of the corridor in a rhythmic interplay of solid and void.
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The addition can be entered via the corridor, which ends at the base of the stair tower, or through two pairs of wood-framed double doors on opposite sides of the living room. One pair opens on the garden court and the other faces the Long Island Sound. Like the glazed corridor wall, these doors create an indoor/outdoor duality for the living area that admits a maximum amount of light and air. At the same time, it maintains sight lines to the water for the neighboring property, which the new structure would otherwise have blocked.
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A second heavy masonry wall connects the two sets of glazed doors, paralleling the stucco wall of the corridor. This wall is demarcated by vertical incisions, horizontal depressions, deep-cut square shelves and an inset fireplace that impart a sense of scale to the double-height room and recapitulate the syncopated geometric abstraction of the corridor façade. faççade The high ceiling of the living room mirrors the stair tower on the opposite side of the building. Two small square windows, cut near the ceiling in the east and west walls of the living room, create a form of sundial that traces the arc of the sun throughout the day.
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The primacy of air and light in the structure is restated by the stair tower, which is dominated by custom-designed, operational steel sash windows overlooking the Sound. A section of open stairs on the second flight allows additional light into the lower floor, and a small, low window sheds morning sun on the bottom stair.
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