Hamptons Beach House

While Hayes counts several beach houses among his projects, this one—a modern, flat-roofed, wood and glass house for an existing client—is a milestone for him, one he feels ideally represents his modernist sensibility and desire for pared-down clarity. The two-story house lies on a thin spit of land between Long Island's Mecox Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Light, air, and a close connection to nature were the guiding themes of the project. Broad glass doors in all of the rooms open to views of the bay on one side and views of the dunes and ocean on the other. But to Hayes, the house is "less about the views out of the rooms, and more about harmoniously drawing the textures, palette, and organic forms of nature into the rooms."