Fly Away Home: A Couple’s Avian-Inspired Cold Spring Nest

It’s clear when you speak to architect Alex Miller and his partner Cecilia Ramos that they have a thing for birds. It’s not just the white umbrella cockatoo that rides on Miller’s shoulder as he shows me around the collection of micro-spaces he’s carved from a Cold Spring townhouse. (Or the fact that the couple have named the cockatoo Goose.) Neither is it the story Ramos tells of a woodpecker who sculpts great architecture to woo a lady, only to realize she’s more impressed when he builds her a home in a tree. Nor is it their tendency to fly between various locales. (“We like to collect small spaces,” says Miller, who shares equally efficient spaces with Ramos in Manhattan and Miami.)

What makes their avian inclinations truly evident is the nest the two have built from the bones of their 19th-century building, weaving together the bits and pieces of their lives with historic Hudson Valley materials. “A house ultimately becomes a home when it becomes a vessel for memories, thoughts, and ideas,” says Ramos. “This is a very heartfelt place.”