Put off by the site “insensitive” and wealth-flaunting homes that have popped up around the Hamptons, a couple with a five-acre property overlooking the Peconic Bay asked New York–based architect and interior design studio Mapos for a more understated weekend getaway that eschews flashy extravagance.

In response, the architects crafted a custom 4,000-square-foot home—dubbed the Peconic House—gently wedged into a hillock with sweeping views of the waterfront.

To minimize the compound’s visual impact, an expansive green roof with native meadow grasses is set atop the structure, while a natural material palette helps camouflage the building into the landscape.

“The couple requested a compound that leaves as little imprint on the site as possible,” explain the architects of their longtime clients, who were especially drawn to the firm’s “vision of reasserting the Hamptons’ creative and environmental legacies.”

Spread out across two floors, the low-slung, five-bedroom home connects to a 2,000-square-foot outdoor terrace that steps down the hillock in parallel to the residence and culminates in a 75-foot-long, infinity-edge lap pool. A simple material palette of concrete, cedar, reclaimed ipe wood, and Corten steel help tie the building to the land and are deliberately unfinished to develop a natural patina over time.

The primary living areas as well as the master suite are located on the main floor, where walls of operable glass along the northeast side frame panoramic views of Peconic Bay. The lower level, built into the hillock, houses the secondary bedrooms and utility rooms.

“Every design decision supports this blurring of built environment and nature: the green roof promotes biodiversity while its cantilevers provide daylight harvesting in the morning and shade in the afternoon, and articulation of the east elevation creates a prow-like bay window for the master bedroom,” explain the architects, who also led the interior design.

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“The interiors’ abstraction and literalness play off one another, an intimate and overall sustainability strategy that makes this project as sympathetic to the environment, performance-wise, as it is visually.”

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Mapos Architects DPC / @studiomapos

Builder/ General Contractor: Gentry Construction Company

Structural Engineer: Condon Engineering PC

Civil Engineer: Fox Land Surveying

Landscape Design Company: John Beitel

Lighting Design, Interior Design, Cabinetry Design: Mapos Architects DPC