Project Description
Stamberg Aferiat Architecture • Stamberg Aferiat Architecture conceived of a fanciful retreat into a 1,100-square-foot quasi-Cubist crayon box for the most demanding of clients: themselves. Nicknamed “Maison Plastique,” this building on Shelter Island, N.Y., was intended to reference Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion, an allusion that Paul Aferiat and Peter Stamberg achieved “in a tongue-and-cheek sort of way,” juror Scott Kilbourn said. The architect-homeowners twisted the floor plan out of a right-angle rationality and used the project as an experiment in new industrial materials, such as a rubber roof and the multiwall polycarbonate that is used in place of glass—its two sheets separated by many perpendicular bracing pieces. Canted walls in painted corrugated aluminum dot the site, and the architects chose strong colors that Mies could only dream of. “It has very few forms, very few elements,” juror Yolande Daniels said. “It relies on color to give it psychology, but it works.” Kilbourn called the project “seductive,” “striking,” and “unique in punch,” but the jurors weren’t unified on whether these were good qualities. Bill Valentine said that the riot of color and angles was “frivolous,” but the appropriateness depends on the function, and most deemed it fair for a beach house.