The HC&G (Hamptons Cottages & Gardens) 2018 Innovator Award winner is Harry Bates. The prolific architect, known for designing midcentury modern vacation homes on the East End of Long Island, joins a prestigious list of prior honorees, including Jack Lenor Larson, Richard Meier, Christopher Peacock, Stephanie Odegard, Peter Marino, Jamie Drake, Bunny Williams, Robert A.M. Stern, Madeline Weinrib, Vicente Wolf, Donna Karan, Deborah Burke and last year’s winner, Martha Stewart.
Bates, an East Hampton local, earned a Bachelor of Architecture from North Carolina State University, where he studied under luminaries no less than Lewis Mumford, Buckminster Fuller, Mies van der Rohe, Richard Neutra, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright before graduating to work for Edward Waugh Associates.
Later, Bates moved to New York and landed a job as an architect for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, where he worked on buildings including the Reynolds Metals Building in Richmond, Virginia, and the Pepsi-Cola Building and Chase Manhattan Bank Building in New York. He then founded his own practice in 1965 and moved east to the Hamptons 15 years later. He joined forces with Paul Masi to found Bates Masi + Architects in 2000. Their works are featured in the 2015 book Bespoke Home: Bates Masi + Architects.
“Harry Bates is the unsung modernist hero of the Hamptons,” says Kendell Cronstrom, editor in chief of HC&G and NYC&G. “While other architects—[Charles] Gwathmey and [Norman] Jaffe—might have gained more recognition during their careers, all took cues from Harry, who moved to the Hamptons in the 1960s and never looked back.”
The HC&G Innovation in Design Awards, which celebrate excellence in the categories of Architecture, Interior Design, Kitchen Design, Bath Design, Garden Design, Small Space Design and Product Design, will be delivered in a July 26 presentation in Bridgehampton. Interior designers Timothy Brown, Richard Keith Langham and Richard Mishaan, along with lighting designer Nathan Orsman and landscape architect Janice Parker, will all serve on the magazine’s panel of key influencers to judge each submission for the competition. The deadline for entries is May 11, and the winning projects will be featured in the September/October issue of HC&G as well as on cottagesandgardens.com.
