Designer Development Debuts in Wainscott
By: AIMEE FITZPATRICK MARTIN
Published: 8/5/2004Source: NewsdayAugust 5, 2004
The house in the Wainscott woods is a long, low, L-shaped structure of straight lines and glass planes, with expanses of beige cedar shingles cantilevered over its own foundation walls. If anything, the house seems to hover in the clearing.
It is the first home to be completed in a highly anticipated designer development known as the Houses at Sagaponac - a project that's stirred comment since it was conceived.
At a launch party on a recent Friday night, the comment is concentrated in the house itself, which is a 5,000-square- foot contemporary design by the New York sister-team of architects Gisue and Mojgan Hariri.
Inside the light-filled but sparsely furnished dwelling, Harry Joe "Coco" Brown - the developer who masterminded the idea of bringing together renowned architects to create an eclectic community of 34 modernist residences - is holding court. "Nobody has ever done anything like this on this scale," he's saying.
Jack Grant, publisher of Home magazine, sponsor of the party, is greeting guests. Builder Ronan O'Dwyer and photographer Patrick McMullan are mingling, as are real estate agents, local architects, interior designers, neighbors and a few naysayers.
And architect Gisue Hariri, dressed in white, is walking around on this "dream come true" night, happy to give tours and explain her vision for the four-bedroom, 4 1/2-bath house being billed by Home magazine as the "2004 American Home of the Future."
"We wanted to do a house that was an antithesis to the big, overblown houses in the Hamptons," she's saying. "We came up with two recto- linear volumes that connect to one another and form an L-shape around a pool area. One volume houses the dining room, living room and master bedroom, while the other forms a private wing devoted to a guest bedroom, breezeway-family room and two guest suites."
The home of the future also has a maid's room, gym, laundry room and storage facilities in the basement - although these spaces are not included in the square footage of the residence, which is on the market for $2.95 million.
Designed without windows, the home is flooded with natural light thanks to walls of sliding glass panels that encourage cross-ventilation and offer an indoor-outdoor feel. What Hariri calls the two main "volumes" are sided with beige horizontal cedar shingles and have 20-by-30-foot "holes" or recessed "voids" that create an outdoor stage of sorts. The Brazilian teak floors running throughout the house extend to the void's exterior, adding to the stage effect.
"The Hamptons is all about seeing and being seen," she explains, "whether it's at the beach, a restaurant or your home. So, in this house, the voids display the private parts of the house to the public. . . . It's very much a performance space, like a stage and a setting."
Relating to nature
Just as the private and public boundaries are blended in the design, so too is the structure's relationship to nature. The concrete foundation was intentionally lifted off the ground, Hariri says, "so that architecture and nature come together, but don't touch each other. ... We wanted this to be a simple structure that hovers over the earth."
To "revolt against the manicured lawns in the Hamptons," the nearly 3-acre property features indigenous landscaping, but with several bamboo trees and ferns artfully placed by the front entrance.
One of the beauties of the Houses at Sagaponac, Hariri explains, is that the architects, who include Michael Graves, Sam Mockbee, Zaha Hadid, Henry Cobb, Annabelle Selldorf and Philip Johnson, were given free rein in their designs. "An architect has to imagine all kinds of lifestyles and clientele who might live in the house, from a retired couple to a family with children to a single artist."
To that end, she installed a handicapped accessible concrete and metal ramp with steel handrails, instead of stairs, to reach the elevated front entrance.
Inside the house, the pale green kitchen features designer-line Viking appliances; Snaidero cabinets with white, glassy finish; DuPont's Zodiaq quartz countertops; lighting with digital control panels by Lutron; and programmable heating and cooling systems.
The bathrooms sparkle with celadon glass tile and painted glass doors by Rimadesio. The Hariris' voyeuristic design tendencies are evident in the translucent glass shower doors and sandblasted glass walls, which make the showering experience more public than private. Even the closet doors are made of reflective glass.
Although the house on Forest Crossing in Wainscott is not on the beach, Hariri achieved a waterside feel by making the pool area the centerpiece of the L-shaped design. Standing on the travertine steps leading to the pool and hot tub, she surveys her futuristic creation.
"People tell me they feel the house is extremely serene and has a Zen-like, meditative quality to it. At the same time, people says it's so sexy, so open, so flamboyant. . . . It's spread out so you can go from one space to another. You can get to the courtyard-swimming area from pretty much every room. It's the heart and center of the house, and, when the weather is not nice, there's still a lot of covered seating."
Critical reaction
Daniel Bendavid, a tagalong guest from Canada, offered his assessment. "One of the first things that hit me when I walked in was the 'Miami Vice' feel, like Don Johnson should be floating around here in a Giorgio Armani suit." He laughs. "I don't know whether to like it or dislike it. My taste runs more traditional, and for a country setting like this, I'd want to live in a more homey, comfortable house."
His friend Judy Simonson, a real estate agent with the Corcoran Group, which has the exclusive sales listing, adds, "But it's so refreshing to see something different in the Hamptons. You go into all these big McMansions and it's like been there, done that. You can almost go through blindfolded. This is such a wonderful idea, to bring a new concept like this to the Hamptons."
Tom MacNiven, the key broker involved in the sale, agrees, saying the house attracted 500 people on its first showing over Memorial Day weekend. "It's the right house at the right time. I have yet to have a person walk through the house and not say, 'Wow.' A house of this size generally takes 20 minutes to show, but here people tend to linger for about an hour, taking it all in."
Interior designer Alan Tanksley, seeing the house for the first time, says, "This is one of the most exciting houses anywhere because it's architect- driven and not developer-driven."
But there were design changes. Hariri had planned a covered but wall-less indoor-outdoor porch area and an outdoor shower that, in her words, would have been "transparent and visible to everyone for a beachlike feel." But, in the end, both were enclosed. Still, she says, "the integrity of the design is as we proposed it."
Being a former theatrical producer, Coco Brown knows how to make a dramatic entrance, which he does, arriving dressed all in white halfway through the party. "Tonight is the beginning of a dream that will come true when all 34 homes are in place and knock everyone out," he says. Five other houses in the 100-acre subdivision are in construction, and one - designed by Henry Cobb - has been sold.
Kate Evarts, a modernist architect who owns Evarts Architecture in Sag Harbor, has watched the project evolve over the past 2 1/2 years and was one of the few critics in the crowd.
"It's so not true that people aren't building modernist homes on the East End. There are about six local firms out here, and we're very sorry that Coco Brown didn't include us in the project. It's a lost opportunity to showcase local talent who knows the area and the history of modernism out here better than anyone else."
Her opinion of the house?
"It's modern with a lowercase 'm,'" she says. "It's not something that we haven't seen before. It's beautiful, but I certainly wouldn't call it the house of the future."
Tanksley predicts that the house - and the entire project - may face an uphill battle in the community. "It's an experimental idea, and all experiments meet with initial resistance," he says. "But I sincerely hope it will make people embrace modern design again."
Coco Brown and Gisue Hariri hope so, too. "You don't need a 20,000-square-foot house to impress people," the developer says.
"If even half of them get built, I think it will be an amazing project," the architect says. "Each one is very unique and inspiring, but the strength of having many of them is something else."
For now, though, the first of the Houses at Sagaponac stands alone, hovering just slightly above the ground in the gathering dusk of a summer evening.
It is the first home to be completed in a highly anticipated designer development known as the Houses at Sagaponac - a project that's stirred comment since it was conceived.
At a launch party on a recent Friday night, the comment is concentrated in the house itself, which is a 5,000-square- foot contemporary design by the New York sister-team of architects Gisue and Mojgan Hariri.
Inside the light-filled but sparsely furnished dwelling, Harry Joe "Coco" Brown - the developer who masterminded the idea of bringing together renowned architects to create an eclectic community of 34 modernist residences - is holding court. "Nobody has ever done anything like this on this scale," he's saying.
Jack Grant, publisher of Home magazine, sponsor of the party, is greeting guests. Builder Ronan O'Dwyer and photographer Patrick McMullan are mingling, as are real estate agents, local architects, interior designers, neighbors and a few naysayers.
And architect Gisue Hariri, dressed in white, is walking around on this "dream come true" night, happy to give tours and explain her vision for the four-bedroom, 4 1/2-bath house being billed by Home magazine as the "2004 American Home of the Future."
"We wanted to do a house that was an antithesis to the big, overblown houses in the Hamptons," she's saying. "We came up with two recto- linear volumes that connect to one another and form an L-shape around a pool area. One volume houses the dining room, living room and master bedroom, while the other forms a private wing devoted to a guest bedroom, breezeway-family room and two guest suites."
The home of the future also has a maid's room, gym, laundry room and storage facilities in the basement - although these spaces are not included in the square footage of the residence, which is on the market for $2.95 million.
Designed without windows, the home is flooded with natural light thanks to walls of sliding glass panels that encourage cross-ventilation and offer an indoor-outdoor feel. What Hariri calls the two main "volumes" are sided with beige horizontal cedar shingles and have 20-by-30-foot "holes" or recessed "voids" that create an outdoor stage of sorts. The Brazilian teak floors running throughout the house extend to the void's exterior, adding to the stage effect.
"The Hamptons is all about seeing and being seen," she explains, "whether it's at the beach, a restaurant or your home. So, in this house, the voids display the private parts of the house to the public. . . . It's very much a performance space, like a stage and a setting."
Relating to nature
Just as the private and public boundaries are blended in the design, so too is the structure's relationship to nature. The concrete foundation was intentionally lifted off the ground, Hariri says, "so that architecture and nature come together, but don't touch each other. ... We wanted this to be a simple structure that hovers over the earth."
To "revolt against the manicured lawns in the Hamptons," the nearly 3-acre property features indigenous landscaping, but with several bamboo trees and ferns artfully placed by the front entrance.
One of the beauties of the Houses at Sagaponac, Hariri explains, is that the architects, who include Michael Graves, Sam Mockbee, Zaha Hadid, Henry Cobb, Annabelle Selldorf and Philip Johnson, were given free rein in their designs. "An architect has to imagine all kinds of lifestyles and clientele who might live in the house, from a retired couple to a family with children to a single artist."
To that end, she installed a handicapped accessible concrete and metal ramp with steel handrails, instead of stairs, to reach the elevated front entrance.
Inside the house, the pale green kitchen features designer-line Viking appliances; Snaidero cabinets with white, glassy finish; DuPont's Zodiaq quartz countertops; lighting with digital control panels by Lutron; and programmable heating and cooling systems.
The bathrooms sparkle with celadon glass tile and painted glass doors by Rimadesio. The Hariris' voyeuristic design tendencies are evident in the translucent glass shower doors and sandblasted glass walls, which make the showering experience more public than private. Even the closet doors are made of reflective glass.
Although the house on Forest Crossing in Wainscott is not on the beach, Hariri achieved a waterside feel by making the pool area the centerpiece of the L-shaped design. Standing on the travertine steps leading to the pool and hot tub, she surveys her futuristic creation.
"People tell me they feel the house is extremely serene and has a Zen-like, meditative quality to it. At the same time, people says it's so sexy, so open, so flamboyant. . . . It's spread out so you can go from one space to another. You can get to the courtyard-swimming area from pretty much every room. It's the heart and center of the house, and, when the weather is not nice, there's still a lot of covered seating."
Critical reaction
Daniel Bendavid, a tagalong guest from Canada, offered his assessment. "One of the first things that hit me when I walked in was the 'Miami Vice' feel, like Don Johnson should be floating around here in a Giorgio Armani suit." He laughs. "I don't know whether to like it or dislike it. My taste runs more traditional, and for a country setting like this, I'd want to live in a more homey, comfortable house."
His friend Judy Simonson, a real estate agent with the Corcoran Group, which has the exclusive sales listing, adds, "But it's so refreshing to see something different in the Hamptons. You go into all these big McMansions and it's like been there, done that. You can almost go through blindfolded. This is such a wonderful idea, to bring a new concept like this to the Hamptons."
Tom MacNiven, the key broker involved in the sale, agrees, saying the house attracted 500 people on its first showing over Memorial Day weekend. "It's the right house at the right time. I have yet to have a person walk through the house and not say, 'Wow.' A house of this size generally takes 20 minutes to show, but here people tend to linger for about an hour, taking it all in."
Interior designer Alan Tanksley, seeing the house for the first time, says, "This is one of the most exciting houses anywhere because it's architect- driven and not developer-driven."
But there were design changes. Hariri had planned a covered but wall-less indoor-outdoor porch area and an outdoor shower that, in her words, would have been "transparent and visible to everyone for a beachlike feel." But, in the end, both were enclosed. Still, she says, "the integrity of the design is as we proposed it."
Being a former theatrical producer, Coco Brown knows how to make a dramatic entrance, which he does, arriving dressed all in white halfway through the party. "Tonight is the beginning of a dream that will come true when all 34 homes are in place and knock everyone out," he says. Five other houses in the 100-acre subdivision are in construction, and one - designed by Henry Cobb - has been sold.
Kate Evarts, a modernist architect who owns Evarts Architecture in Sag Harbor, has watched the project evolve over the past 2 1/2 years and was one of the few critics in the crowd.
"It's so not true that people aren't building modernist homes on the East End. There are about six local firms out here, and we're very sorry that Coco Brown didn't include us in the project. It's a lost opportunity to showcase local talent who knows the area and the history of modernism out here better than anyone else."
Her opinion of the house?
"It's modern with a lowercase 'm,'" she says. "It's not something that we haven't seen before. It's beautiful, but I certainly wouldn't call it the house of the future."
Tanksley predicts that the house - and the entire project - may face an uphill battle in the community. "It's an experimental idea, and all experiments meet with initial resistance," he says. "But I sincerely hope it will make people embrace modern design again."
Coco Brown and Gisue Hariri hope so, too. "You don't need a 20,000-square-foot house to impress people," the developer says.
"If even half of them get built, I think it will be an amazing project," the architect says. "Each one is very unique and inspiring, but the strength of having many of them is something else."
For now, though, the first of the Houses at Sagaponac stands alone, hovering just slightly above the ground in the gathering dusk of a summer evening.