East Hampton Pool Follies
Village of East Hampton, New York
A pool house isn't a house. It's a threshold — between the domestic and the recreational, the everyday and the escape. Andrés Cortés designed two pool follies for a private eight-acre estate in the Village of East Hampton, each conceived as a jewel box set into the landscape. Present without imposing. Transparent without being bare.
DATE
2023
TYPE
Private Homes
SERVICES
Architecture Structural Engineering Enclosure Engineering Design Build
The structures are built from steel, concrete, and glass — a material palette chosen not for austerity but for disappearance. Full-height glass walls and floor-to-ceiling doors dissolve the boundary between inside and out, allowing the surrounding estate to remain the subject.
Even the powder room, enclosed within a fixed glass wall and full-height sliding door, holds its transparency without concession.
Every joint was a design decision. To maximize clarity and minimize visual interruption, a bonded acrylic connection system was selected — a choice as much optical as structural.
Acrylic's refractive index reduces distortion when viewed through water or from the grounds, preserving the crisp, mirror-like reflection that makes each cabana feel less like a building and more like a presence.
These are small structures with exacting ambitions. They speak to what becomes possible when the logic of how something is built and the experience of how it is inhabited are treated as a single, integrated act of making.
