When the Garden Designs the House – New York Times Annotated

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Partly by chance, Mr. Browne, 60, a managing director of the Tweedy, Browne Company, a New York investment firm, stumbled on an approach to construction that has been advocated for the past decade by prominent landscape architects up and down the East Coast,

All argue strongly for spending a lot of time with the land that will surround a house before building it.

“By understanding the natural dynamic of a site, you can create more potent and meaningful architecture,” said Mr. Woltz, who holds master’s degrees in architecture and landscape architecture from the University of Virginia, where he teaches a course called “Sites and Systems” that emphasizes the importance of assessing a site’s prevailing winds, geological conditions, plant communities and soil qualities, among other conditions. “The goal is to inspire architecture that’s inextricably linked to the land,” he added.

“A lot of people don’t get it. They say, why haven’t you started building yet?” said Mr. Gordon, 46, of the couple’s East Hampton friends. “There’s nothing worse than when people tear down the trees and plunk down a house, put in a few plants and call it a day.”

“We’re trying to focus on making the house part of the land,” he said.

Mr. Browne discussed with Mr. Gordon the idea of cultivating an intimate garden around their future house, while allowing the rest of the property to feel like parkland.

In the spring of 2000, before making any major decisions, the couple built a temporary 35-foot-tall observation platform in the middle of the property to help them formulate their ideas for the overall design.