Talk about the sweet life. Businessman Steph Fogelson was wrapping up a long, fruitful career packaging lines of flavored cosmetics for girls. (Fancy a watermelon lip balm? Or how about peanut butter, or chocolate?) And his wife, Linda Fogelson, once owned a much-loved Westchester candy shop that also offered lip-smacking novelties. Their family lived in and around greater New York for years, in addition to owning a weekend place in Sag Harbor. But then life got even sweeter: The couple decided to build a new house in Amagansett and settle there full-time.
The Fogelsons bought a thickly forested two-acre parcel within walking distance of Amber Waves Market. Once part of the Bell Estate and close to South Fork Country Club, the lot had failed to attract developers because Town rules allowed clearing for not more than a modest building site. Fortunately, amid all the woodsy seclusion and a dense swath of full-grown trees, a natural rise promised ocean views from a multistory home. The couple hired Matthew Miller, the principal of New York–based StudioLAB, to take on the architecture, contracting, interior design, and logistics. His style is neither super-modern nor wholly vernacular, but rather a contemporary blend of both. His own impeccably renovated home in Sagaponack served as a calling card of sorts, and the Fogelsons were smitten after viewing it. “We felt like we were commissioning a work of art,” Steph Fogelson says.
“I don’t think they knew exactly what style they wanted, but I really pushed them,” recounts Miller, who started with the exterior material palette, from the bluestone gravel in the driveway (he dislikes asphalt and paving stones) to Alaskan yellow cedar shingles both on the walls and roof of the home’s barn-style volumes. The “softscape” gravel, he says, offers a “high-end Hamptons look,” and the shingles are already weathering to the calming gray that’s so highly prized on the East End. Miller also installed Yankee gutters—recessed stainless troughs set flush with the roof shingles, rather than hung off the eaves, so as not to spoil the crisp rooflines. And sleek gray concrete board cloaks the base of the house in lieu of a craggy stone foundation.
The living room includes a St. Germain sofa from Poliform and a Meroni & Colzani Doge cocktail table from Artemest, flanked by pairs of De La Espada accent chairs (left) and Lawson-Fenning armchairs (right). The floor lamps are from Visual Comfort & Co. and the area rug is from Marc Phillips Decorative Rugs.
Barstools from Property tuck into a custom island in the kitchen. The range is by Wolf and the backsplash stone is from Neolith.
In the dining room, a Trapeze chandelier from Apparatus hangs above a De La Espada table and chairs.
The den features a Poliform sofa and a pair of armchairs from Arhaus.
A steel-plate baluster and shiplap walls delineate a sleek staircase that leads to upper-floor bedrooms.
The nightstands and bed frame in the primary bedroom are from Lawson-Fenning. The bed covering is from Sferra.
Walls in the primary bath are clad in a Stone Source marble and the floors in a tile from Nemo. The stool is from Blu Dot and the sconce is from Juniper.
StudioLAB, a Manhattan-based architecture and design firm, clad the home in Alaskan yellow cedar shingles, a stark contrast to the driveway’s gray bluestone gravel.
The 6,885-square-foot house reveals different faces on different façades. The earth-sheltered basement is partially buried in front, but its guest room has walk-out access to the pool in back. Up a flight to the main floor, a wide guest room window looks out at the front drive through a thicket of thin vertical slats. Four more bedrooms, accessed from a modernist stair with a heavy steel-plate baluster, capitalize on those views from the top floor.
The interior floor plan is spacious and spare, graced with a series of wide, modern rooms soaked in natural light and designed for streamlined living. (The Fogelsons arrived with just their own artwork and their clothes.) In the kitchen and dining area, which embrace Miller’s minimalist approach but are also hubs for entertaining, notable gestures include a waterfall concrete island and an oval oiled-ash dining table that sits beneath a Trapeze chandelier from Apparatus. The adjacent den features enormous picture windows and a gas fireplace clad in man-made sintered stone from Neolith. And stained oak wraps structural beams soaring above the living room, its walls and vaulted ceiling entirely clad in white-painted pine shiplap.
Given the now-familiar supply-chain shortages that originated with the pandemic, everything arrived more or less on time, providing the Fogelsons with a seamless transition to their new home. Everything, that is, except for the Sub-Zero. “We had about nine months with a temporary fridge,” Linda Fogelson reports cheerfully, “but we did not suffer.” Life is sweet, indeed.