AMAGANSETT WABI SABI
Amagansett, NY

The owner of an classic modern 1960's beach cottage designed by the famed architect Harry Bates wanted to landscape the yard around a newly installed wooden barrel sauna.  Inspired by Wabi Sabi, the Japanese aesthetic that encourages appreciation of the beauty of imperfection, impermenance and incompleteness, the design approach used naturalistic stone and boulders, mixed evergreen shrubs, and grasses and ferns to create a shady contemplative space.  A new raised patio with boulder seating offers a restful spot before and after use of the sauna.  Naturalistically placed irregular bluestone set in the ground provide a link back to the outdoor shower and house.  The overall goal was to be evocative, but not an imitation, of the feeling of a Japanese landscape.