In this meandering, episodic field of rocky and vegetated shapes, we focused on the vigorous pursuit of the irregular.

Old Quarry

Guilford, Connecticut

Minimalist sculptor Tony Smith designed this house, in 1953, as part of a unique suburban subdivision set within a former waterfront quarry. During an exacting architectural renovation, we took the site’s own granite—quarry refuse and bedrock—as our primary medium, reordering and manipulating the stone to heighten the experience of the found conditions and to integrate the building volumes with the site’s larger patterns.

On this parcel, which partially floods during tide surges, the house was set on piloti, and much of the rough post-extraction condition remained.

2243 N25 wb — Granite gathered on site takes on multiple functions--at times highly ordered, at times slightly edited as found in the remnant borrow pit.

Japanese Six-fold Screen, Monoyama Period. We saw the landscape as a companion to the abstraction of the Tony Smith house. We played with distance, scale and metaphor to connect to the history of the quarry and the Thimble Islands.

2243 N20 — The homeowners have found a domestic retreat where the essential character of Old Quarry has been unearthed, not carpeted over.

Inserting Order

This tiny plot sits on a thin slice of broken rock occupying a narrow terrace between the Long Island Sound and a sheer granite escarpment. The landscape approach weaves paths through a more highly differentiated series of bands–articulating a progression from seawall edge and open coastal plane to rocky quarry vestiges, emergent woodland, and bedrock face. Our work creates occupiable ground for walking and exploring and a context strong enough to respond to the sculptural clarity of the building

2243 N27 — By 2006 when the new owner bought the house, decades of benign neglect had made the site physically and visually impenetrable.

The granite was turned and worked just enough to create level, steady paths.

2243 N2 wb — On a site with little grade change, the simplification of the ground into a legible plane amplifies the drama and dynamism of the borrow pit and tailings pile.

We developed the masonry detail on site with the landscape contractor to find the right balance between roughness and refinement

Testing jointing stone options during construction

RH CLARKE RES 52011 7439 highres v2 — Our response to the site was not a manicured suburban landscape, but one that celebrated the found conditions of the quarry

2243 N3 wb — A vein of surficial stone extends the vocabulary of the quarry into the realm of the house

Editing = Making

The landscape is a result of editing as much as making. A careful process of removals, especially of invasive exotics, shapes a fluid and continuous space of habitation below the canopy. On the ground plane, years of hand weeding and organic maintenance practices have conquered invasive exotics, allowing a seedbed of scrappy natives to take hold. Iterative and targeted interventions to the landscape continue to be investigated, responding to the homeowners use of the site.