The Antidote to the Seaside McMansion – Architecture Critic Morgan
Monday, June 14, 2021
A recent house on a five-acre pasture on Conanicut Island challenges the usual norm that successful and wealthy patrons build only bloated castles along the shore.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThe Newport architectural firm founded by James Estes and Peter Twombly over two decades ago (now with the added partner of Adam Titrington), have long been the designers to go to for homes that captured both the best of Modernism and the Rhode Island vernacular. Their work is environmentally sensitive, integrated with the land, handsome, and above all modest.
Wilson Field house is constructed of white cedar shingles, metal roof, and board formed concrete–durable, low upkeep materials. PHOTO Will Morgan
An Estes Twombly +Titrington house is in stark contrast with the egotecture of many of the new houses that line the shore from Watch Hill to Little Compton. Since the Hamptons/Vineyard/Nantucket crowd is discovering Rhode Island, it comes as no surprise that wealthy and socially ambitious McMansions continue to hold sway over a sensitive Modernism. It seems like a kind of Jay Gatsby insecurity that drives the people who can afford such luxury to go overboard by commissioning pompous fantasies of traditional "cottages" of the region's past.
A new "cottage" on Poppasquash Point in Bristol combines elements from several historical styles while not capturing the grace of any of them. PHOTO: Will Morgan
The clients of a new home on Adams Point in Barrington or Beavertail in Jamestown might be accomplished and distinguished in various fields of endeavor. Yet most of them are sadly ensnared in the belief that a mélange of roof pitches and acres of ornament projects an image of having arrived. Wrapping a multi-gabled, multi-porched, multi-garaged mansion in shingles does not make it an authentic legatee of the Newport-born Shingle Style. These houses are less about grace and good design than they are about excess and braggadocio.
The simplicity and social responsibility of the 2,800 square feet Wilson Field house is an astringent after the crass, plutocratic displays of boastfulness–a simple salad and a glass of dry white wine compared to the all-you-can-eat buffet of the McMansion.
The client for this house on what had been a 300-year-old farm was not afraid of doing the right thing. A much-respected yacht builder with a penchant for experimentation and boldness, he instructed architect Peter Twombly that he wanted his house to be "transparent, tranquil, and modern, but with a touch of the local vernacular." This quiet retreat for a man commuting to boatyards in the Netherlands, New Zealand, and elsewhere around the globe, offers a view of the water only from the second floor–instead of a giant picture window, this represents a more subtle interaction with nature, the Japanese concept of the borrowed view.
Field house. Traditional materials, modern forms, clean lines, and no pretentions. Landscape design by Robyn Reed Studio. PHOTO Will Morgan
Wilson Field house is built in the spirit of a yacht. The materials are functional and durable: white cedar shingles, metal roofs, and concrete walls poured with the form-board impressions left raw. There are no superfluous details–no complicated gables with extraneous turrets. As with designing a ship, everything has to work, and this house is nothing more, nothing less, than what it needs to be. It takes the self-confidence of an ocean sailor to commission a house like this.
Wilson Field house at night. Long-low, connected forms, like a New England farm. PHOTO Warren Jagger
