If you’ve spent any time researching architects in the Hamptons, you’ve undoubtedly come across the name Bates Masi.

Winners of 11 design awards in 2008-2009, the key to the ongoing freshness of the their work lies in their philosophy: “ the focus is neither the size nor the type of project but the opportunity to enrich lives and enhance the environment”.

As you’ll see when you visit their website, a consistent theme that runs through the firm's diverse work is the blending of bold, simple shapes with rich, sometimes unexpected materials. And while clean and free of unnecessary artifice, there’s a warmth, comfort, personality and livability to the interiors that’s reflective of the closeness with which the architect's work with their individual clients.

Also noteworthy is the natural, graceful and harmonious way that each of the homes sits on the property.

We hope you enjoy.

Charles Gwathmey, an architect who turned his love of Modernism and passion for geometrical complexity into a series of compelling houses and sometimes controversial public buildings, died August 3, in Manhattan. He was 71.

Mr. Gwathmey was part of a generation of architects who put their own aesthetic stamp on the “high Modernist” style developed in the early 20th century by Le Corbusier and others. Many of Mr. Gwathmey’s best buildings were houses. A series of wealthy clients — including Steven Spielberg, David Geffen, Jerry Seinfeld and Jeffrey Katzenberg — chose him to create living spaces that were boldly geometric and luxuriously appointed, modern but certainly not spare.

Gwathmey Siegel & Associates, which Mr. Gwathmey founded with Robert Siegel in 1968, was a rare architecture firm to maintain a thriving residential practice (its first apartment, in 1969, was for the actress Faye Dunaway) while also creating large buildings for schools, museums and private real estate developers.

They included the International Center of Photography in Midtown Manhattan, theMuseum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, an expansion of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard and his 1992 addition to the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Though lavish, Mr. Gwathmey’s residential designs were more about “This is who I am” than “This is what I’ve got,” said Mr. Gwathmey's stepson, Eric Steel.

Among architects, Mr. Gwathmey was admired for his steadfastness during the 1980s, when some of his contemporaries turned to historicist, or post-Modernist styles.

“A lot of people jumped ship, but Charlie was loyal to Modernism,” said Peter Eisenman, the architect and theorist.

Read the New York Times excellent obituary, from which the above was exerpted.

Strong, simple shapes. Refined, pleasing proportions. Imaginative use of materials and technologies. Bold and surprising use of color and texture. This is what you’ll be treated to when you view the wonderfully organized labyrinth that is website of Lorcan O’Herlihy.

And while their houses are the foundation that the firm’s reputation was built on, you’ll see some wonderful commercial, mixed use and institutional projects as well.

Of particular interest is Habitat 825, project that Mr. O’Herlihy saw as a chance to reimagine the American condo complex.

The New York Times credits Mr. O’Herlihy with managing to defy a fundamental limitation of condominiums, even the most architecturally innovative ones: standardization. “It’s hard to break out of the box” and make genuinely interesting places to live, he said, “when you have identical units and densely packed neighbors. It’s also restrictive to force people to walk into a lobby and down a long boring hallway to reach their front door.”

 Amen.

Solveig Fernlund and Neil Logan established fernlund + logan architects in New York in 1992.The firm’s work includes residential and commercial projects which have been widely covered in the press. Solveig Fernlund attended the University of Lund, Sweden. Neil Logan studied architecture at Rhode Island School of Design, and Columbia University, and is a registered architect in New York.

Why we like their work so much:

The strong sense of design that runs through everything they do.

The subtle interplay of textures and restrained, sublime use of color.

The unmistakable sense that they are into the craft of what they do, big-time.

The fact that they applied all of the above talents to what is one of the best websites we’ve seen.