Work of Stelle Lomont Rouhani Architects Is Subject of New Monograph

For Stelle Lomont Rouhani Architects, the firm’s approach is not about a particular style — it’s about solutions.

Viola Rouhani, one of the Bridgehampton architecture firm’s four principals, explained during a recent interview that the firm aims for “inevitable resolutions, whether it’s working with the topography, or the vista, the climate. Whatever it is, we’re always striving to make the correct solution for that specific area.”

The firm’s work is modern, but more than that. “Warm modernism” is how Rouhani describes it. “We do appreciate so much of what early modern architecture taught us,” she said, citing economy of scale, circulation, making the most out of space “rather than space just for the sake of space,” and the integration into the landscape.

Twenty-two of the firm’s projects, plus a pictorial chronology of the firm’s work, are featured in the new book “Stelle Lomont Rouhani: Architecture and Interiors,” published by Rizzoli New York. It is the firm’s first monograph, and a long time coming.

The featured projects date from about 2000 forward, and the chronology goes back as far as 1989, to the initial design of North Haven Village Hall. As founder Frederick Stelle notes in a preface, he personally started practicing architecture in 1976, and his earlier work laid the foundation for the firm’s 21st century designs seen in the book. He opened Stelle Architects on the South Fork in 1985, and the firm took on its current name in 2012, when Rouhani and Michael Lomont became partners.

Architecture critic and author Paul Goldberger penned the introduction and conducted an interview with the firm’s four principals — Stelle, Lomont, Rouhani and interior design lead Eleanor Donnelly — which runs several pages, interspersed with full-page photos of their work.

In his introduction, Goldberger credits the firm for refuting the notion that modernism does not fit in the Hamptons and is mostly chaotic and disconnected.

“It is not only traditional architecture that has a coherent language; modernism does, too,” Goldberger wrote. “You just have to know how to speak it, and how to shape modernism into buildings that are understated, serene, ordered, and respectful of the land.”

Most of the projects in the book are on the East End, though there are also projects that were completed as far away as Florida, Spain and Antigua. Nearly all of the projects are residential, and most are waterfront.

“The majority of our work is out here, but increasingly we’re doing more work outside the area,” Rouhani said.

The book is broken into five main sections: Elevated, Engaged, Perched, Integrated and Within.

The first few sections speak to how the building sits on the land, or its relationship with the land, Rouhani said, and the last section focuses on interiors.

On many of the featured projects, Stelle Lomont Rouhani worked with renowned landscape architects, such as LaGuardia Design Group, Ed Hollander, Edwina von Gal and Landscape Details.

For Stelle Lomont Rouhani, collaboration with landscape architects starts at the get-go, according to Rouhani. “It’s not like the architecture comes first and then comes the landscape,” she said.

The architects and landscape architects get together early so the design develops at the same time, for a sense of continuity, she explained.

Another of the firm’s concerns is sustainability, demonstrated through the use of passive solar design, such as the strategic use of overhangs, keep heat out in summer but allow it in during the winter.

Because the firm often works on environmentally sensitive areas on the water, the design process as well as the regulatory process can take years before breaking ground. There are height restrictions, setback requirements and FEMA floodplains to consider.

“Even when you’re trying to do the right thing, there’s a lot of people to answer to,” Rouhani said. “So, if you don’t get accepted the first go around. You have to come back.”

The team behind a home’s design is quite larger than just the architects.

“We’re always relying on the expertise of land planners and environmental experts to really figure out what we can do at each site” that’s going to be the most correct for the site, Rouhani said.

For a home in a challenging situation, she explained, the goal is to make something that is admirable and beautiful in and of itself as an object — without the viewer having to know that the creator was trying to solve for something difficult.

They seek to create a rich experience in and of itself that still complies with all of the restraints, she said.

She said that is a strength of their work and why certain clients come to them: the ability to solve problems in a way that still makes for good architecture.

She sees the monograph as more of a story book and a source of inspiration than a coffee table book.

“We’re really telling stories about these houses, and a little bit about the people who live in them and how each one is approached,” she said. “It’s a book that I think hopefully a lot of architects would like to look at, but I think more than that, really anyone who is interested, even from a layman perspective, in architecture in coastal areas and also in landscape architecture as well as interiors.”