How One Hamptons Family Built a Home Around Their Love of the Water

An Amagansett home by Bates Masi + Architects designed around a family’s love of wind surfing, kite boarding, and sailing, where lifestyle directly shapes the architecture.

In Amagansett, New York, a quiet stretch of land has been shaped into a home that reflects not just its setting, but the lifestyle of the family who lives there. Designed by Bates Masi + Architects, the house was created for owners whose days revolve around the ocean, the wind, and the subtle signals that tell them when it is time to head out onto the water.

A Home Designed for Watching the Conditions

For this family, being on the water is as much about timing as it is about passion. Wind surfing, kite boarding, and sailing all depend on knowing when conditions are right, and the house was designed to support that awareness. Daily life here includes watching subtle environmental cues, whether at home or nearby on the beach, and the architecture responds by making those signals easier to read rather than hiding them.

This Hamptons house is divided into two wings, separating living spaces from bedrooms while maintaining a sense of openness and flow throughout the home.

Two Wings That Balance Living and Rest

The house is arranged into two distinct wings that create a clear rhythm to daily life. One wing is dedicated to shared living spaces, while the other is reserved for sleeping areas. This separation allows busy, social areas to remain lively while quieter spaces stay calm and protected, all without feeling disconnected.

A swimming pool, deck, and reflecting pool create a layered backyard that leads naturally from outdoor living spaces back into the heart of the home.

A Backyard Designed to Lead You Home

Looking out over the backyard, the home connects visually and physically to a swimming pool and a timber deck. From there, a series of steps gently lead up past the pool to a reflecting pool and onward to the house itself. The journey through the landscape feels intentional, guiding movement while reinforcing the connection between water, architecture, and everyday routines.

Reading the Wind Through Water

For a family so attuned to wind conditions, knowing when the breeze is right is essential. The reflecting pool plays a practical role beyond its visual appeal, acting as a barometer that reveals the strength and character of the wind. Ripples across the surface give immediate feedback, turning a quiet architectural element into a daily tool for decision making.

A reflecting pool doubles as a wind indicator, allowing the homeowners to read conditions before heading out onto the water.

Light Filled Interiors That Stay Open to Nature

Inside, the home feels bright and airy thanks to a restrained palette of light wood and expansive floor to ceiling windows. Natural light moves easily through the spaces, while views out to the surrounding landscape keep the interior closely tied to the outdoors. The atmosphere is calm, open, and deliberately uncluttered.

Light wood finishes and floor to ceiling windows create an interior that feels open, calm, and closely connected to the outdoors.

A Structure That Makes Engineering Visible

The structure of the house becomes part of its visual language. Exposed glulam wood beams run east to west, with venting panels positioned between each beam along the perimeter. To span large distances, steel flitch plates connect the beams, creating slim voids that neatly accommodate light fixtures while remaining clearly visible as part of the design.

In this modern living room, exposed glulam beams and steel flitch plates form a structural system that is left visible and celebrated throughout the house.

A Fireplace That Carries Design Across Boundaries

In the living room, the fireplace surround echoes the steel flitch plates seen overhead. This detail creates a visual link between structure and finish, while also extending from the interior out to the exterior. It becomes a subtle connector, reinforcing the continuity between inside and outside spaces.

A fireplace surround with black accents mirrors the ceiling structure and continues seamlessly from interior to exterior.

A Minimal Kitchen with Practical Warmth

The kitchen stays intentionally simple, with wood cabinets that match the timber used throughout the house. This consistency helps the space feel integrated rather than separate. A large island adds extra storage and provides a casual place for a couple of people to sit, making the kitchen both functional and welcoming.

A minimalist kitchen with wood cabinetry and a generous island blends seamlessly with the home’s overall material palette.

Details Revealed Along the Hallway

Moving through the hallway offers a closer look at the steel flitch plates that connect the structural beams. Here, the engineering becomes more intimate, allowing occupants to appreciate the craftsmanship and logic behind the home’s construction as part of everyday movement.

The hallway reveals close up views of the steel flitch plates that connect the home’s exposed timber beams.

A Bathroom Designed for Life After the Ocean

One of the bathrooms includes two showers, one located indoors and the other outdoors. This thoughtful addition makes rinsing off after time in the ocean easy and practical, while reinforcing the idea that the home is designed around an active, water focused lifestyle.

An indoor and outdoor shower setup makes post ocean clean ups effortless in this water loving Hamptons home.

This Amagansett house shows how architecture can quietly respond to the rhythms of everyday life. By aligning design decisions with a family’s deep connection to wind and water, Bates Masi + Architects created a home that feels intuitive rather than imposed.

Photography by Bates Masi + Architects | Architect: Bates Masi + Architects | Contractor: K. Romeo Inc.

Source: Contemporist