The project consists of an expansion to an original colonial house built in the Quaker settlement of Chappaqua and burnt during the Revolutionary War. The house was rebuilt after the war around the surviving stone fireplace. The original rectangular house of hand-hewn and dressed oak beams with hand-dressed window and door trim was laid out with a surprisingly complex interior consisting of rooms built around a center hall stair constructed at each landing and half landing. This resulted in an arrangement of seven different levels each connected by seven stair risers.  Uncoincidentally, the house is located on a street named Seven Bridges Road.

In all, the square footage of the house was more than doubled through the addition of three new parts: a breakfast room with garden storage below; a kitchen with a dressing room and master bathroom above and with garden equipment area and wine cellar below; and a septagonal family room connected to the original fireplace and surrounded by a porch on five sides.

The exterior expression of the individual parts is derived from vernacular American prototypes, such as barns and meeting houses, although with classical and modern references, such as Gunnar Asplund’s Stockholm Library and the Temple of Athena Nike.

In the interior however, all parts of the new construction are interconnected to form a modern open space which contrasts with the cellular arrangement of the original house. These spaces unfold away from the original house and are arranged in relation to landscape elements: the Septagon to a walled garden; the breakfast room to a reflecting pond; and the center pavilion of kitchen with master bedroom above to a greensward extending into the woods.

On the second floor, a corridor connecting the bedroom and bathroom is rotated parallel to the angular geometry of the Septagon, and a view is created framing the cupola in a window.  The Septagon itself remains connected to the original house only at a single point.

The overall composition opens up and rotates the new elements away from the cellular arrangement of the original Georgian-derived farmhouse.  The new house is designed to alter the original relationship between the natural and the man-made so that nature is included in the conception of the cultural.