Inside Out

Mark de Reus and The Wiseman Group team up to create dreamy estate in Kaupuleh on Hawaii's Big Island.

- Nancy A. Ruhling

Reached via a simple limestone bridge that's flanked by a pair of pools and palm trees swaying lazily in the breeze, the compound, designed by Hawaii-based architect Mark de Reus along with The Wiseman Group, serves as the second home for a Los Angeles couple and their large extended family and guests.

In a gated community in Kaupulehu, the indoor/outdoor estate-there's a limestone and teak main house, three self-contained houses or hales as the Hawaiians call them, and several pavilions-is like a private island with five-star resort amenities.

Its design, which features undulating s shingled roofs and curved and circular rooms, takes its cues from the ocean waves.

Its interior color palette is derived from the setting: Tropical saturations of greens, yellows, and oranges with reds that are repeated in the new plants in the gardens.

Appointed with natural materials, including limestone floors and walls, it is furnished with antiques and contemporary pieces, many of which reference the state's Asian influences.

"There are touches of whimsy," says Paul Vincent Wiseman, whose eponymous design studio is based in San Francisco.

This sense of playfulness is most visible in the lighting of the teak vaulted ceilinged spaces, which double as a prime design element.

The kitchen table is illuminated by a huge art-glass globe, by Nicholas Weinstein, whose parts were pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle.

"Bound together with handmade Hawaiian rope, it looks like an Ikebana basket," says Brenda Mickel, Wiseman's design director.

In the living room, sets of floating lights, strung together from the ceiling like leis, move gently at the whim of the wind.

And in the children's TV room, the natural light from the walls of windows in the circular space is augmented by a mobile pendant in the center of the ceiling whose globes are folded fabric coated in resin.