For a luxurious rental home in St. Barth, Barnes Coy Architects created a house designed around views of the Caribbean Sea using Pennsylvania limestone
For lavish rental home La Danse des Etoiles, Saint Barthélemy (also known as St. Barth or St. Barts), architects Robert Barnes and Christopher Coy of Barnes Coy Architects of Bridgehampton, NY, were commissioned to create a property designed around views of the Caribbean Sea. Because the site sits on a promontory high above the water, the contours of the land were uneven, creating a slope that needed to be leveled. From a design perspective, the architects felt the best strategy was to carve into the slope with stone walls and terraces, integrating the house into the site and completing the hilltop. Based on this idea, it was decided that a rough-textured fieldstone was the ideal solution.
The stone chosen was Pennsylvania limestone from the Agens Stone Yard in Columbia, NJ. It was brought to the site in containers because a suitable stone could not be found anywhere on the island. “This stone is a weathered fieldstone, and because of its squared-off lozenge shape, it is very conducive to construction and to suggesting the compressive strength and beauty of structural stone,” said Barnes. “It can be easily shaped with hammer and chisel and can be laid up like block. For this reason it resembles walls found in medieval European construction. We have used this stone in many projects.”