4 days ago
A Contemporary House Soars in Rural Rhode Island
For years, Amale Andraos and Dan Wood didn't need much when they escaped to their ramshackle second home in rural Rhode Island. Simply having a few days off was all they needed.
Ms. Andraos and Mr. Wood are the founding partners of WORKac, a New York-based architecture firm with an international mix of projects. Ms. Andraos was the dean of Columbia's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation until 2021 (and is now dean emeritus) where Mr. Wood also taught. In addition, they are the parents of two children, Ayah, now 15, and Kamil, 12, so leisure time has always been in short supply.
Nevertheless, when they were visiting Mr. Wood's parents near Hope Valley, R.I., in 2008, they happened to learn that one of the neighbors was selling a prime 22-acre parcel of land. The private property was nestled against a river and surrounded by undeveloped forest and state-protected land. It came with a house, but not one they liked.
'The house was a mess,' said Ms. Andraos, 52.
'It was a hunter's log cabin from the 1950s that they added onto in the 1970s and 1980s,' said Mr. Wood, 57, noting that the whole structure was in a state of decay.
When they visited the site, however, it was so idyllic they couldn't pass it up — they purchased it for $500,000. 'We bought it for the land,' Ms. Andraos said.
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