The Dream Is On

An all-star team creates a bayside home where art, design, and landscape are perfectly aligned.

- PILAR VILADAS

The expression "indoor-outdoor" has become a bit overused in architecture, but for this weekend house on Long Island with expansive water views, it's absolutely on target. The couple who commissioned the project wanted a house that was open to the outdoors yet also allowed them to display their extensive collection of contemporary art. From an impressive team that included the architect Blaze Makoid, the interior designer Joe Nahem, and the landscape architect Edmund Hollander, they got both, and then some.

Makoid's design for the two-story house was inspired in part by the cast-concrete buildings conceived by Tadao Ando for the Japanese "art island" of Naoshima. The clients, who had been there, shared Makoid's enthusiasm. Makoid also used Japanese shou sugi ban, or charred wood, for the beams and exterior siding. The house's site drops down a full story, and a lower level contains a garage, a gym, and laundry and mechanical rooms. To reach the glass entry hall from the garage, you walk up a flight of staggered limestone steps, flanked by corten-steel planters full of greenery. "The topography drove a lot of the design," Makoid says. "You're inside-outside the entire time."