Vincent Falotico’s Ridgefield, Connecticut Home

By thoughtfully removing trees from an overgrown four-acre property on a high ridge, architects Angelina and Vincent Falotico revealed stunning views up the Hudson Valley and as far away as Manhattan. They restored the majority of the landscape with native meadows.

The great room’s glass doors open to a generous covered porch; a painting by Donna von Holdt hangs above the granite fireplace, concealing a television screen. The Oomph backgammon table was a gift from Louise Brooks, partner in Brooks & Falotico and co-founder of the furnishings line.

Floor-to-ceiling windows along the western-facing back wall of the house deliver breathtaking views. Custom pillows mimic the vistas, which are three-quarters sky.

In the kitchen, white plaster frames rift-sawn oak cabinetry panels to create a quiet geometry and tranquil palette, a motif that’s repeated in the kitchen island—which is topped with polished concrete—a nearby built-in desk, and elsewhere.

A spiral staircase leads to the third-floor office and terrace—Vincent’s favorite room in the house—which is outfitted with furnishings the Faloticos collected over decades, including an Eames lounge chair, Noguchi table, and Tibetan rug, their first purchase as a couple.

Windows wrap around the corner of the light-filled main suite, allowing sight lines to move across multiple walls; artwork by Randy Orzano, Vincent’s cousin, hangs above the bed.

A pocket door leads to the serene en suite bathroom and a Japanese soaking tub with corner views of Manhattan.

The covered porch is a favorite spot for relaxing.

A bocce court is framed with Corten steel, used throughout the landscape for a clean and simple aesthetic.

The couple chose a warm, dark tone for the wall of windows along the back elevation to complement the modern farmhouse style; steep grading here meets a stone retaining wall original to the pre-existing house, which was taken down.

Angelina and Vincent Falotico were at a cocktail party when the beauty of Ridgefield first blew their minds. Ten years later, when a nearby property came on the market, the couple suspected they’d found the spot to build their new home. The husband and wife—who had first met in architecture school—were no strangers to high-end residential design; both worked at architecture firm Brooks & Falotico Associates in New Canaan.

Situated on four acres of land along a ridge at one of the town’s highest points, the property was entirely wooded. The trees obscured sight lines, and though no other homeowners on the street had cleared their land, “I had this feeling there was a view,” says Vincent, a partner in the firm. “It was an act of faith.”

Opening up the steep, wooded area wasn’t easy. “It was like a forest—it took a month to clear the site,” says general contractor Robert Lewandowski of L & L Builders. “No one had lived there for years.” But the Faloticos’s belief paid off. Now, the place claims expansive views west over the Hudson Valley and south to New York City. On the Fourth of July, the sky lights up with fireworks from dozens of towns along the horizon.

The couple updated and transformed an existing, small, stone-and-shingle cottage on the property into an artist’s studio. But they tore down the derelict main house because it ignored its bird’s-eye perch.

Sunshine and uninterrupted vistas drove the new schematic design. However, the project’s parallel triumph is its pervasive sense of calmness and contemplation, a notion championed by Angelina, a senior project manager at Brooks & Falotico (and the firm’s first employee in 1990), who was bearing the burden of illness during the twenty months of design and construction.

To achieve desired results, the Faloticos worked to make the house as tall as possible, which required skillfully stacking volumes that negotiate the site’s steep, varying grades. The graceful result also integrates distinct but charming facades, with pretty, traditional windows in front transitioning into walls of floor-to-ceiling dark-framed ones at the back.

The first floor’s open plan includes a kitchen and great room, where “the view is three-quarters sky,” says Vincent. The second floor accommodates four suites plus the main bedroom, which features wraparound windows that demonstrate an effort to continually extend views across more than one wall. Here, a pocket door—almost never closed—also draws the eye into the en suite bathroom, past a floating glass shower and Japanese soaking tub, and back to the outdoors. A spiral staircase from the room rises to the third-floor office and its spectacular 400-square-foot terrace.

Though Angelina recently passed away, the house continues to manifest the couple’s legacy of teamwork in career and marriage. “It’s healing, calm, peaceful, and contemplative,” explains Vincent of the home—exactly how they’d pictured it. Their leap of faith in clearing the site, along with distilling the house down to its most essential components, resulted in a beautiful simplicity that allows for clearing the mind, too.

Project Team
Architecture, interior design, and landscape design: Vincent Falotico, Angelina Falotico, Brooks & Falotico Associates
Builder: Robert Lewandowski, L & L Builders