Books by David Sokol

Long known as an enclave for the wealthy and glamorous, today the Hamptons and nearby coastal communities have become a haven of seaside modernism. New Hamptons Houses 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 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.

Hudson Modern showcases stunning new houses in the Hudson River Valley that embrace the dramatic settings and cultural bounty of this popular region.As the birthplace of American landscape painting, the Hudson River Valley has long been a refuge from the city and a laboratory for new aesthetic expression. Today, thanks to its ascendant reputation as a weekend utopia, architects are extending that tradition into the built environment. Designing residences that revere local climate, landscape, and history in a distinctly modernist language, these talents are sowing a new Hudson River school of architectural thought. Hudson Modern surveys this emerging domestic architecture, featuring nearly twenty houses that integrate with site and region through composition, scale, and materials, and which strike a balance between innovation and rootedness. A reconstructed midcentury house accented in cedar, walnut, and bluestone by Joel Sanders and landscaped by the late Diana Balmori blurs the edge of habitation and nature. KieranTimberlake revises the classic vision of a glass box by cladding a home on a rocky site in Pound Ridge in a tapestry of steel, aluminum, copper, and glass. In Rhinebeck, Steven Holl experiments with a radical form that has both ecological and social dimensions. Author David Sokol presents these and numerous other examples of design-forward residences that are responsive to terrain, building vernacular, and cultural legacy. Together, the new Hudson Valley houses point a way forward for rural living in the twenty-first century.