Photographs by Paúl Rivera/ArchPhoto
When architect Roger Ferris was tasked with building a beach house on Massimo Tassan-Solet and Karin Dauch’s one-acre waterfront property in Noyac, the first thing he did was study the light and view in order to create as site-specific a structure as possible. “If I can imagine the house somewhere else, I don’t do it,” he says. “The setting was just so spectacular—as an architect, I thought, Well, I can only screw this up.” That was hardly the case: Ferris, the design principal of Roger Ferris + Partners, has overseen the renovation of Philip Johnson’s Wiley House, as well as the construction of a wing of St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis and the Bridge golf clubhouse in Bridgehampton. He began this bay-abutting project by sweeping away the existing fifties-era Cape Cod house and designing a simple scheme for the new structure. The living areas would be on the first floor and the four bedrooms on the second, and there would be a playroom for their three kids in the basement, plus home offices for Tassan-Solet and Dauch, accessible but separate from the main building. “It’s kind of an inside-out house,” says Ferris of its transparency. During construction, the family was so eager to move in that they lived in an on-site trailer for two months before the house was finished in March 2012. Recalls Dauch, “I used to kayak past this property and thought it was like this hidden paradise.”
The Exterior
Architect Roger Ferris specially designed this 6,000-square-foot Noyac home so
that the dramatic waterfront could be seen on the approach.
Photo: Paúl Rivera/ArchPhoto
The Open Staircase
The glass railings echo the transparency of the architecture and help support the cantilevered treads.
Photo: Paúl Rivera/ArchPhoto
The Pool
Ferris situated it on the upland side of the house, so as not to compete with the view of Noyac Bay. “And yet, when you are swimming in it,” he says, “you still have a clear view of the water.”
Photo: Paúl Rivera/ArchPhoto
The Master Bathroom
Like a little ship, the bathtub commands its own space off the master bedroom, while the sink and toilet are tucked away elsewhere. “It’s not like a formal bathroom,” says Ferris. “The master suite just rolls right into it.”
Photo: Paúl Rivera/ArchPhoto
Alvaro Francisco Olsen (left) West 36th Street and Broadway. On April 16, 2008, Olsen, an El Salvadoran immigrant living in Jackson Heights, was killed by a DHL truck. Flaco East 153rd Street and Melrose Avenue, the Bronx. On May 18, 2007, a thief known as Flaco stole a fourteen-karat-gold cross from a jewelry store on Elton Avenue. He was struck by a city bus as he fled. The necklace was never recovered.