Houses by Vita Design Group

Vita Design Group provides architecture, construction and interior design under one roof. Explore the work of the firm founded by Lucien Vita.

Waterfront

How the team designs for waterfront settings in Fairfield County: flood elevation, views from each floor, the neighbours' views and shoreline review.

Riverside Avenue, Westport, at dusk across the Saugatuck River
Riverside Avenue, Westport, at dusk across the Saugatuck River
Riverside Avenue: the balcony, looking along the river
Riverside Avenue

Older houses

How the team decides what to keep in an older house, and what Westport's demolition-delay review means for the design and schedule of a project.

The mid-century house, Westport: the pool and the low pavilion
The mid-century house, Westport
The mid-century house: a suspended fireplace before the stone wall
The mid-century house

Modern

Modern houses in Fairfield County: simple volumes made warm with charred wood, steel and glass, and three ways of drawing a house.

The house of floating boxes: a hand-drawn elevation, published in New England Home in 2015
The house of floating boxes
Blue Coat Lane, Westport: the white upper volume over dark siding
Blue Coat Lane, Westport

Lucien Vita is the founder of Vita Design Group, which provides architecture, construction and interior design under one roof. Here is the studio’s work in depth, one house at a time. It is arranged by setting rather than by date or by style, because in Fairfield County the setting usually makes the first decision about a house before anyone draws a line.

A house on the water starts with the flood map, the tide and the view, and with the houses on either side that have views of their own. An older house starts with what is already standing: a roof, a frame, a fireplace, a run of brick that someone laid sixty years ago. A modern house starts with a plain question about volume and light, and with the materials that will make a simple form feel warm enough to live in.

Lucien Vita founded Vita Design Group in Westport in 2006. His biography and his point of view are on lucienvita.com. The firm’s full portfolio is on vdgarch.com. How the three relate is explained on the About page.

Photographs: Vita Design Group (Instagram), SR Photo LLC.