Hamptons Modern: Contemporary Living on the East End

Long known as an enclave for the wealthy and glamorous, today the Hamptons and nearby coastal communities have become a heaven of seaside modernism. Hamptons Modern: Contemporary Living on the East End showcases houses that reflect the area's design history and strong affinity for its landscape.

There are few places in the United States that have experienced as many waves of American modernism as Long Island’s East End. In New Hamptons Houses, author David Sokol explores the latest architectural experiments taking place in New York’s legendary summer retreat. With contemporary design increasingly mainstream in the region, the seventeen residences featured here reflect modernism’s spread across not just the Hamptons but up-and-coming destinations like Bellport and Montauk, Greenport and Mattituck. Yet perhaps more important, the houses featured here represent a shift away from the image of conspicuously sprawling properties for the elite; these projects return to modernism’s founding principles, shun Instagrammable spectacle, and steward the East End’s increasingly fragile landscape. 

These houses interface with the seaside landscape in ways that reference the Hamptons’ rich design history and sensitively highlight Long Island’s famed natural beauty. Some are renovations and additions to houses by famed twentieth-century modernists like Andrew Geller, Charles Gwathmey, and Norman Jaffe, and leading offices such as Bates + Masi, Young Projects, and Ryall Sheridan Architects represent the contemporary approach to twenty-first-century regionalism. New Hamptons Houses presents these and numerous other examples of design-forward residences that are responsive to terrain, building vernacular, and cultural legacy.

About the Author:

David Sokol is a New York-based critic specializing in architecture and design. He is the author of Hudson Modern: Residential Landscapes (Monacelli, 2018), and a contributing editor at Architectural Record and Cultured magazines. He is the author of several books, including The Modern Architecture Pop-Up Book and the series Nordic Architects, and writes regularly for Azure, Departures, and multiple other publications. Before he turned his primary to the built environment, Sokol was managing editor of I.D. magazine. He lives in Red Hook, New York.