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Large sliding windows retract at the corner, opening the living area onto a lawn overlooking Long Island Sound.

Suzanne’s bridge and book clubs meet around the dining table in the cottage instead of in the larger house, whose open layout makes such gatherings problematic. “There was no place where I could seal us off,” Suzanne says. “So now I use the cottage for game playing, and we can enjoy ourselves and know that we’re not inconveniencing Brooks.”

A lofted sleeping space furnished with a king size Design Within Reach American Modern bed was made possible when the architects raised the ceiling to create a triangular skylight. The move carved out enough headroom to make the second-floor space usable, while still keeping the cottage in compliance with strict local zoning rules for “accessory” buildings.

Suzanne and Brooks Kelley at the back of their 1,100-square-foot guest cottage.

Sheets of unframed glass fill the spaces between the building’s operable windows and the sloping eave of the roof, giving the house, as architect Alan Organschi puts it, “the feel of coming apart at the seams—of surfaces unhinged.”

The floors, walls, and ceilings are coated in FSC-Certified laminated bleached bamboo.

The Kelleys furnished the cottage with help from Suzanne’s daughter Betsy Burbank of Betsy Burbank Interiors. Classic modernist icons, such as a Saarinen Womb chair for Knoll, a Herman Miller Eames lounge chair, and an Eileen Grey E1027 side table look at home alongside present-day pieces such as an Encore sofa (which handily folds down into a sleeping surface) from Room & Board and a Doka rug designed and produced by Stephanie Odegard. The Wohlert pendant lights from Louis Poulsen were designed by Vilhelm Wohlert in 1959, but grouped as such, they appear distinctly contemporary.