Living by the Sea by ACC Art Books

LIVING BY THE SEA

CONTENTS 6 26 44 64 78 94 104 120 130 140 156 168 180 190 200 210 222 232

A Sagaponack Gem Bandol - Inspired by the Horizon Surfside Montauk Son Rullan, Deià, Mallorca Villa Apollon, Lefkada, Greece Unsurpassed Views of the Bay of Illetas A Stylish Villa on Sun-drenched Ibiza Herne Bay Hideaway A Canyamel House with Dreamlike Views Shagwong Residence in the Hamptons An Artsy Duplex Apartment at Knokke-le-Zoute A Sag Harbor Waterfront Villa Xerolithi House (Serifos, Greece) A Seaside Abode at the Danish Coast Refugio de Pescadores, A Fishermen’s Shelter San Carles, Costa d’en Blanes Cool Sophistication at Saint-Barth Minimalist Home in Cape Town’s Constantia Valley

CONTENTS 6 26 44 64 78 94 104 120 130 140 156 168 180 190 200 210 222 232

This family home in Sagaponack, a village on the East End of Long Island, New York sits between a pond on one side and the vast ocean on the other. Looking out from the interiors, just yards away from the water, one might feel as if you are on a boat, surrounded by water on every side. The house was built by Stella Lomont Rouhani Architects in 2015, and was renovated by Julie Hillman Design. Hillman, an Architectural Digest AD100 designer who specializes in high-end residential homes in New York City, The Hamptons, Aspen, Miami, Palm Beach, and Europe, faced a unique task of maintaining the same footprint of the original house, while adding more rooms to the layout. The house has two floors comprised of three bedrooms on the lower level and five on the upper. Hillman’s focus on this residence was high quality materials such as Valders limestone floors inside and outside, rift white oak wood, and superior collectible furnishings. Hillman wanted the interiors of this oceanside home to echo the exterior, and not obstruct any of the stunning views. The cashmere wool carpet with visual ripples mimics the nature of sand; the Flylight fixture by Studio Drift in the living room feels like a wave in the water. The chandelier, composed of glass suspended from wires, is large enough to see from every angle of the house. Its light creates an incredibly magical effect, framed by the double-height windows. Hillman strives for her interiors to be subtle to the eye, but altogether unexpected and beautiful. She tends to use minimal pieces, choosing to focus more on the form and design of each item. For her, it is important that each individual piece can stand on its own as well as merge aesthetically with others to create a fluid space. Clean lines and interesting uses of materials create warm and inviting spaces - a mix of contrasting pieces that speak to one another. Architecture: Stella Lomont Rouhani Architects. Design: Julie Hillman Design.

www.juliehillman.com

From Geneva, where she lives, to Menorca, Bandol and Warsaw, Valérie Chomarat’s projects for villas, fincas, chalets and yachts are defined by her own particular vision of minimalism and by her characteristically sensitive integration of architecture and environment. Nature, geography, climate, history and purpose: for Valerie, preliminary studies and hand sketches are crucial for understanding each of these defining aspects of a project in the early stages of a design. It was under the mentorship of the British designer, John Pawson, that Valerie Chomarat learned the fundamentals that have driven the evolution of her own signature style - the primacy of proportion, space, surface, light and shadow. This approach is also showcased in this recent project by Valérie Chomarat - a family home in Bandol, France. From the sea, almost nothing is visible. Forms that blend seamlessly into their setting, clarity of line and a restricted palette of local materials: these are the signature elements of Valérie Chomarat’s style. For this family home located in a cove in Bandol, close to the house where the architect spent holidays as a child, Valérie looked to the horizon for inspiration. Her response is a sublime architectural panorama of graphic longitudinal strokes, stretched volumes and elongated openings, in which the azure line of the sea is commandeered as both backdrop and protagonist. Drawing on the influences of the home in the Ardèche forest where she grew up and of the work of Tadao Ando, whom she so admires, Valérie has created a subtly layered composition in which interior and exterior worlds - house, garden, sea and surrounding nature - infiltrate and enrich one another. From the tobacco-hued tiles to the ochre exterior walls and the earthy hues of the masonry benches, everything has been chosen to embed the natural colour palette of the coast around Bandol within the house. With the same local stone used for floors, basins and worktops, the design is a study in the strength of simplicity and singularity. Everywhere the clarity of the attenuated lines of the architecture plays out against the unbroken materiality of the walls, benches, floors and ceilings, creating a quiet visual field in which to register the grain of the walnut doors, cupboards and kitchen units, the gentle influx of nature and a painstakingly assembled collection of art and design pieces. Amongst Valérie’s cherished possessions are design classics that include a Pierre Jeanneret bench, an Akari light by Isamu Noguchi, chairs by Poul Kjaerholm and Georges Nakashima and a vintage Magistretti lamp, a gift from her parents, which are set alongside African shields and burnt wood tables in the living room. An art lover with an exceptional eye and refined curatorial instinct, Valérie Chomarat has also added ceramic pieces by Bénédicte Vallet, works of sculpture - from an oversized necklace on a stand by South African artist Julia Atlas and to a Robert Courtright mask - and paintings by Japanese artist Sadaharu Horio and Korean artist Yun Hyong-Keun. Two photographs by her mentor and former employer, John Pawson, sit prominently on a shelf in the kitchen.

www.valeriechomarat.com

Alexander Design’s founding interior designer Vanessa Alexander takes us on a tour through her Surfside Montauk project; an eclectic, modernist-style holiday home on Long Island’s easternmost point. Montauk, or ‘The End of the World’, as locals call it, is situated at the tip of the Long Island peninsula in New York State. Known for its stretch of coastline, Vanessa Alexander’s close friend chose the East Hampton village to be the location for her family’s relaxing weekender. Julie engaged Vanessa after living in her home for two years - a contemporary glass building designed by esteemed New York architect Steven Harris and built in 2010. Briefed to transform the sleek home into a warm and slightly ‘bohemian’ beach house, Vanessa has captured the ease of Montauk living through tactile layering, organic shapes and vintage pieces sourced from around the globe. While the original home had what Vanessa describes as ‘amazing bones’, the fact it was designed for a couple with no children meant it needed some key alterations to accommodate for a family of four and a dog. “The clients are big entertainers and love to host their friends and family when they’re in Montauk. So the home needed to flexibly cater for entertaining day and night with both children and adults,” Vanessa explains. The home is predominantly designed on a horizontal axis to make the most of the water views. Vanessa honoured this existing floorplan and layout on the first floor and diverted her focus to remodelling the kitchen. Together with New York architects Resolution: 4 Architecture, Vanessa replaced the dated kitchen with a streamlined oak and plaster iteration shaped by integrated storage. This open-plan space opens directly onto the pool that runs parallel to the width of the building – a vital feature of the existing home that had to stay. The glass-encased staircase at the centre of the home leads up to the reworked primary suite upstairs and children’s and entertainment rooms below. It wouldn’t be a true Hamptons holiday house without an extensive guest retreat for when family and friends come to stay. Although the guest house was part of the original home, Vanessa explains there was a lack of flow, and it felt removed from the main house. As a result, the three-bedroom, three-bathroom guest house now has the same creamy, neutral tones and textures as the rest of the home, creating a seamless union between both spaces. Vanessa and Resolution: 4 Architecture ‘activated’ the external courtyard between the home and the guest house overlooking the North Atlantic ocean, introducing a large outdoor kitchen, outdoor seating area and fire pit. “A lot of the activity now takes place in this elevated area - it serves as a bridge between both built parts and offers the perfect place to come and eat and relax together,” Vanessa says. By working within the existing framework with an engaged team of collaborators, Alexander Design has maintained the original home and guest house’s architectural integrity while reshaping it for a growing family. Architecture: Resolution: 4 Architecture / Design: Alexander Design / Build: Taconic Builders / Landscape: Summerhill Landscapes

www.alexanderdb.com

Moredesign is an Office for Mediterranean Architecture, based in Deia, Mallorca, offering services in the fields of architecture, design and landscaping. Founded by Oro del Negro, and Manuel Villanueva, Moredesign fuses a contemporary design approach with a revision of traditional practices and construction methods. In Mallorquin language, the term “Son”, as in “Son Rullan” was used to designate a major and important estate. Son Rullan is one of the most remarkable estates in Mallorca. Some of Moredesign’s greatest childhood memories are set among those ancient walls, and much of their architectural language grew from that place. When they were given the chance to work on one of the houses that was built in one of the plots in which the estate was divided over time, they felt both a great joy and a deep respect. The term architect is synonym to maker, a skilled mason. Those old properties had masters of building as early architects, with deep knowledge on the materials and how to build considering its climatic conditions and available materials. The building they were given was poorly located, it had inflicted a terrible wound in the mountain, it was badly orientated and lacked any soul. Moredesign had very strict legal, urban and heritage rules, and they had to double up the volume in a very narrow strip of land. Inspired by the old Son Rullan, built as an addition of volumes in the course of the centuries, they designed a series of volumes rather than a unified concept, volumes which could be rotated and organised gently following the topographical curves, the required program and the different views. In this process Moredesign achieved a new orientation towards the sea which enabled them to re-connect the buildings to the landscape gracefully. In the centre of the building, articulating the existing volume and the extensions, they placed the kitchen as the epicentre of gravity and life. A second volume much like a defence tower was left almost empty, just inhabited by a beautiful spiral staircase which follows the golden ratio proportion. The last added volume aligns the house towards the magnificent peak in which Son Rullan nests. The new volumes are very transparent and open both lengthwise but also crosswise, as a permeable structure between the mountain and the sea. In the mountain side, patios, built-in seatings and small gardens create a magical landscape where the early morning light softly appears through the magnificent olive trees. Internally Moredesign used the ancient building materials, lime walls, local stone, reclaimed and limed woods, brass, tadelakt, peeled olive wood, ... This is not only a story about a house though, it was also a journey of recovery of a land which was neglected, invaded by pine trees and decaying. Thousands of old stone walls and terraces were recovered in the process. The team of Moredesign believes they gave back to their beloved Son Rullan a landscape which is healing.

www.moredesign.es

PUBLISHER BETA-PLUS nv/sa Avenue Louise 367 B-1050 Brussels www.betaplus.com DESIGN Patrick Pierre