This New Canaan, Connecticut, Pavilion Pays Homage to the Region’s Many Modernist Marvels

AD100 architect Deborah Berke remembers the primary time she set foot on the land. “It was inspirational,” she recounts of the positioning: a verdant eight-acre swath of New Canaan, Connecticut, with thick woods, a mild grade, and a picturesque pond. “I’m a New Englander by heritage, and that quintessential panorama of huge timber and water actually speaks to me.” On the time, the present dean of the Yale Faculty of Structure had been approached by the property’s homeowners to construct an auxiliary pavilion to their predominant home—someplace for visitors to sleep or for themselves to make use of as a retreat. “The impulse was a lightweight contact in order that nature felt most modern.”

By cautious siting, ingenuity of fenestration, and different tips of transition, Berke crafted a nuanced sequence that delays gratification, introducing the scenic surrounds in a single spectacular sweep. When visitors arrive they’re greeted by a seemingly monolithic expanse of grey brick, its staggered façade concealing the doorway. The gravel motor court docket, nonetheless, offers strategy to a dashed line of rectilinear pavers that unfold beneath a easy black metallic trellis, beckoning guests. (“That trellis says come right here,” Berke jokes.) Step by means of the door, flip the nook, and you’re greeted by a panorama of window partitions that body the sylvan vista. “Earlier than you enter, you don’t fairly know what’s going to be revealed,” she notes. “Solely inside do you’re feeling the place you’re.”

The general id speaks to what Berke calls “the trajectory of basic modernism in New England.” It was on this nook of Connecticut, in any case, that midcentury trailblazers reminiscent of Eliot Noyes, Marcel Breuer, and Philip Johnson reinvented the picture of American domesticity, one glass-wall abode at a time. With its taught quantity, restricted supplies palette, and engagement with the panorama, Berke’s pavilion builds on that custom. Its spare rectilinear envelope wraps a versatile open plan: primarily only one bed room suite and a mixed residing/eating/kitchen space, each of which open onto the pure surrounds due to broad window partitions.

At lower than 2,000 sq. ft, the mission hardly ranks amongst Berke’s largest. Nevertheless, as an architect, she explains, “there may be pleasure within the little issues. With tiny initiatives, the enjoyable is getting deep into the small print.” Right here, these nuanced “geek-out” moments embody the bed room’s swinging door, which pockets neatly into a distinct segment when open, turning into an imperceptible a part of the walnut wall paneling. Fastidiously calibrated out of doors lighting, in the meantime, casts “a gracious glow, with out overwhelming the gorgeous darkness.” And the marble fireside incorporates a sculptural firewood area of interest in the identical beautiful stone, which additionally reappears on the kitchen backsplash and counter tops. Elsewhere, supplies meet in refined juxtaposition. Wooden flooring, as an illustration, offers strategy to pale stone pavers, establishing a distinction between indoors and open air; and the bathe’s striated travertine performs off the grey exterior brickyard framed by the window.

The mission wrapped in 2021, and although the plans have been born in a prepandemic mindset, the outcomes proved excellent for the occasions. The pavilion can double as a work-from-home retreat, a spot to isolate, or an alfresco entertaining area, with a terrace that exceeds the sq. footage of the construction itself. “We didn’t notice how sensible this was,” Berke displays of that flexibility, including that the home transitions nimbly season to season. The black trellis evokes the uncovered tree trunks and deep shadows of New England winter, whereas the grey brick enhances the greens of spring and summer time and this leaf-peeping countryside, after all: “Something works with the colours of fall.”