After earning her doctorate at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design and working in Norway’s capital as a teacher and research fellow, architect Nina Edwards Anker came home to the U.S. with a refreshed perspective on environmental sensitivity. “I lived there for seven years and I was very influenced by the Scandinavian tradition of building modest structures with a respect for nature,” says Edwards Anker.

Video by Corey Richardson

When the opportunity arose to build an eco-cottage on family land in Southampton, Long Island, Edwards Anker drew on that experience. She started the design process by exploring her ideas around the concepts of transparency and opacity. She remembers asking herself: “‘What is the concept of opacity?’ It was the idea of enveloping,” she says. “For some reason, I was thinking of, like, inky, thick, round.”

Her thought experiments resulted in a 1,738-square-foot vacation home completed in 2017, made striking for the combination of curved, shingle-clad walls that meet planes of glass, with some cast in bright, unexpected color.

The house’s footprint and finished geometry is further bound by the site’s restrictions. First, the home sits just outside of the radius of an adjacent wetland. The angled glass walls at either end “are determined by the angle of the radius of the wetlands,” says Edwards Anker. The back walls adhere to a 35-foot setback to the neighbor and the height—one 16-foot story– follows zoning laws. “We’re really squeezed in there,” says Edwards Anker. “We have this L-shape, which is exactly determined by local and environmental regulations.”

“From the inception of the project, I was committed to making this an environmental home that was also exploring emerging technology, and abiding by Passive House principles,” says Edwards Anker, who also studied at the New York Passive House Institute. To that end, the LEED-certified home uses passive heating and cooling strategies, local building materials, and photovoltaic panels.

Edwards Anker designed with key Passive House strategies in mind, such as thick insulation, an energy recovery ventilation system that supplies continuous fresh air, and Passive House-certified window and door units, all of which makes for a comfortable and stable interior temperature. “There's a lot of humidity and mold problems in the area and we eliminated those,” says Edwards Anker.

There is no structural steel, only timber, including rounded laminate timber trusses fabricated by a firm in upstate New York. The firm joined the project after Edwards Anker was told that her trusses were not buildable to the radius she required. “There were many challenges,” says Edwards Anker. “Our builders were master framers, and that's why we were able to get this beautiful, round shape. Not every builder can do that.”

Edwards Anker installed a spectrum of translucent colored skylights in the hallway, the order of their shades inspired by the color theory of Goethe and J.M. William Turner’s 19th-century paintings of sunlight. “The house is very much based on the concept of effect and affect, which is something I wrote about, in depth, in my dissertation,” she says, with the way one experiences the house being the most important factor.

The play of colored light and the water’s rippling reflections project onto the curved interior walls and create a “solar clock” for Edwards Anker and her family year-round. Over time, the effect has slowed down pace of life and helped them be more in tune with nature. “You're underlining the drama of how the sun can move, and therefore, underlining slower biological rhythms,” says Edwards Anker. “The aim is to connect inhabitants with the flow of rhythms that are available in the natural environment that you don't find in city living.”

You’re underlining the drama of how the sun can move, and therefore, underlining slower biological rhythms.
—Nina Edwards Anker

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Project Credits:

Architect: Nina Edwards Anker / @nea.studio

Builder: George Berenz, Licciardi Builders

Structural Engineer: Will Laufs, LED

Civil Engineer: Stephen Rosetti Architect

Landscape Design: nea studio

Lighting Design: nea studio

Interior Design: nea studio

Sound Engineer: Charles Von Mueffling, Obelisk Consulting, Inc.

Cabinetry Design/Installation: Fred Baryami, WB Woodworking

Mechanical Engineer: Jordan Goldman, Zero Energy Design

Electrical Engineer: Michael Edwards, Avioworks

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