Tour a Contemporary 8,500-Square-Foot Getaway on Georgica Pond
Three top design professionals join forces to create a dreamy vision in East Hampton.
Richard Schultz chaises line the infinity pool, which is anchored by a Duo Cabana from Janus et Cie. Stelle Lomont Rouhani Architects incorporated flat-roof extensions to provide ample coverage for the home’s extensive outdoor entertaining areas. Photography by Joshua McHugh
It’s said that two’s company and three’s a crowd, but three was the magic number required to execute this beautifully designed gem on the shores of East Hampton’s Georgica Pond. The triumvirate—project architect Michael Lomont of Stelle Lomont Rouhani Architects, interior decorator Damon Liss, and landscape architect Edmund Hollander of Hollander Design—rose to the considerable challenge posed by their Manhattan-based clients: Build a house on a grand scale, one luxurious enough to accommodate and entertain beloved family and guests, yet intimate enough to be a blissful domestic getaway for two.
The sitting area off the kitchen includes a B&B Italia sectional and an Alpha chair by Pierre Paulin. Photography by Joshua McHugh
The brief for the bucolic setting—two three-acre parcels comprising a former dairy farm and a dilapidated house—was to restore the site’s natural topography while also erecting a functional, sustainable compound designed for the future. Sited on the property’s highest elevation, the new 8,500-square-foot home maximizes expansive views south across the pond to the Atlantic Ocean. “The house displays a combination of traditional gabled volumes that reference original structures found on the site,” Lomont comments. “These forms are occasionally modified to alter the amount of daylight and enhance the indoor and outdoor spatial relationship. Flat roofs reduce scale and provide shading and covered porches.”
A primary wing and a guest wing flank a double-height living room that leads to a sprawling covered outdoor living, lounging, and dining area adjacent to an infinity pool. Although the structure is “larger than we typically build,” Lomont says, “we considered the scale, the mass, and the volume while breaking down the living spaces throughout.” Sapele, a durable, sustainable African hardwood similar to mahogany, is employed almost everywhere, “tying together the tight material palette outside and inside.” It also helps delineate how people move from room to room. “I don’t like to look at doors,” the architect adds, “so the experience of walking through the house is a curated one. You are always walking toward the light or the art or the furniture in a controlled and organized way.”
James Turrell’s Ursa Major illuminates the dining room, which features a custom Vincenzo de Cotiis table and vintage Gio Ponti chairs. Photography by Joshua McHugh
Such finely articulated architecture created the ideal canvas for decorator Damon Liss, who had the task of “softening the home and making it feel beachy” without undermining its contemporary edge. “The clients are very well educated in art and design,” he notes, and rooms are indeed chock-full of statement furniture and standout artworks. The clients worked with art advisor Sheri Levine of SBL Fine Art, who chose notably substantial pieces by Alex Katz in the living room and James Turrell in the dining room. “The question is what each individually curated element does in the space: They all need to speak to one another properly.” In the living room, boxy stacked wooden side tables with travertine tops flank a graceful Joaquim Tenreiro sofa and a T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings Mesa cocktail table; in the dining room, the Turrell amplifies a custom Vincenzo De Cotiis table surrounded by a suite of 1950s Gio Ponti dining chairs salvaged from a cruise ship. “When you have a contemporary house with tons of glass,” Liss muses, “you don’t want to overdesign the interiors so that they become a distraction. You have to think about how much restraint you can have, while still making them inviting and interesting.”
The gleaming primary bath is designed to funnel the view to Georgica Pond in the distance. Photography by Joshua McHugh
The ample windows frame yet another artful vision, namely the spectacular landscape overseen by Hollander, who began his assignment by looking at “what makes the property special: its scale and the view of Georgica Pond. There needed to be a dialogue between the main house, the guesthouse, and the landscape, a choreography of how you arrive at the location and move through it from indoors to outdoors. The clients didn’t want old and stuffy East Hampton, so the design is fairly wild and informal, celebrating nature.” The flower-flanked infinity pool, in particular, is a reflective focal point that connects visually to the pond, “a living Monet painting that changes from sunrise to sunset every day. This entire house is very special, and a wonderful place to be.”
The print version of this article appeared with the headline: Harmonic Convergence.
