A Modern Colonial Farm

Met Home of the Month Modernist architect Deborah Berke drove around Long Island to study the many vernacular precedents for this up-to-date take on colonial farm buildings.

Written by Donna Paul • Photographed by Antoine Bootz
Produced By Linda O'Keeffe

Noted contemporary architect Deborah Berke began her work on this new summer home by going for long drives with her client Herbert Sambol along the meandering lanes of East Hampton and the nearby pastures of Wainscott and Sagaponack. To help focus their collective process, they photographed historic houses, barns and outbuildings as they drove. Specific elements of those classic structures provided inspiration for the design of the 4,300-square-foot house, yet the finished product reinterprets its local predecessors in unanticipated ways.

The house expresses Berke's trademark style: spare, concise, almost austere, which is what attracted Sambol to her work. "It was great to have a client who would embrace the rigor," says Berke, who is on the faculty of the Yale School of Architecture. "We both wanted a style that would relate to the history of the region without being slavish to the past," says the homeowner, a real estate investor.

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