One of the few bright spots of the Covid lockdown era, at least from our very particular point of view, was the uptick in garage conversions. With so many stuck at home, often with a partner, sometimes with children as well, the lowly garage started to look a lot more appealing. It offered the dream of peace, quiet, physical distance and, for painter and creative director Patrick McDonough and his partner, Michael Burst, the proprietor of Hudson River Flowers in Manhattan, a place to create.

The problem: There was no garage on the couple’s property in the Springs section of East Hampton, NY—just their small ranch-style home surrounded by trees that, because of strict zoning rules, couldn’t be removed, and one super-long 1966 Chevy Impala Super Sport convertible. So they hired architecture firm Worrell Yeung to figure out the puzzle.

Max Worrell and Jejon Yeung were more than up for the challenge. Their solution: a 13½-by-30-foot building, nestled next to the main house and between towering trees, with a garage on the bottom and an art studio above that’s horizontally bisected by a wraparound strip of 4-foot-high glazing. “The feeling of being perched up in the trees with a 360-degree view makes the experience so expansive yet so private and intimate at the same time, as you are quite protected from the foliage of the surrounding trees,” say Yeung.

Below, a tour of the minimalist multi-purpose garage that’s just a stone’s throw from the house but feels far away.

Photography by Naho Kubota, courtesy of Worrell Yeung.