As the East End’s die-hard surfers know, the waves off Montauk crest high enough for a great ride, but none reach as high as the 40-foot bluff on which the home featured here sits. “Figuring out how to maximize views from the site while also connecting the house to its challenging locale became the rallying cry of this project,” says its architect, Robert Young, who fashioned a three-story house that allows for direct access to flat land from each floor.
The process of building the five-bedroom residence involved leveling a portion of the hill while scooping out other parts of it so that rooms could be tucked into the hollows. What resulted is a classic “upside down” house, with an expansive open-plan family/living/kitchen area on the first level and sleeping quarters on the lower two floors. “From the driveway, it looks like a small one-story house,” Young comments, “but a wonderful surprise unfolds the moment you enter, taking in the views outside from the staircase leading down to the bedrooms.” The architect positioned an open-tread stairway—fitted with a glass baluster that lets in light—against a raw concrete wall, creating what he calls “a beauty-and-the-beast effect. It’s a very modern house with a very human quality.”
Fortunately, Young’s clients knew what they wanted from the start, beginning with the architect’s site-sensitive design. As for the interiors, “Their requests were clear: They needed to be well edited, with furnishings that would connect to the modern architecture,” says Gray Davis, who with Will Meyer runs the Manhattan-based design firm Meyer Davis. (The clients had stayed at the Meyer Davis–designed 1 Hotel South Beach in Miami and made the call soon afterward.) “We responded by sticking to a very muted palette,” adds Katie McPherson, the company’s associate principal, director, “although we knew they also love splashes of bright color.”
In a hallway, a custom ceiling fixture by Scott Daniel hangs above a runner from ABC Carpet & Home.
In the living room, RH sofas flank a custom coffee table from Facture Studio. The shearling pouf is from Comerford Collection.
In the dining area, a chandelier from Kaia Lighting hangs above a custom table and chairs from Skylar Morgan.
Custom seagrass pendants from MIA Collection hang above a sectional from Ernest in the seating area adjacent to the pool. The coffee table is from Danao Living and the armchairs are from Homenature.
The family room features an RH sofa, a coffee table from Harbour Outdoor, and a shelving unit by Blu Dot.
A glass baluster allows light to filter through the sub-ground staircase.
A guest room includes a bed from RH and a rocker from West | Out East. The shams are from West Elm and the throw is from Malibu Luxxe.
Chaise longues from Gandía Blasco surround the backyard pool area, which overlooks the Atlantic. Adirondack chairs from Room & Board surround a firepit from Houzz.
Big moments of color—from the ocean, the sun, and the sky—are omnipresent and unchangeable, since the “natural light of the setting creates dramatically different theatrical experiences inside the house from season to season,” McPherson notes. But the Meyer Davis team introduced “smaller moments” throughout, including, in the entryway, a Fernando Mastrangelo mirror partially coated with the artisan’s trademark pigmented dyed sand. “Its vibrant hues,” McPherson comments, “reference the fields of wildflowers you pass on the drive east from the city.”
The home’s prevailing shade is white, which “really only becomes white when it reflects and complements other colors,” Meyer opines. “White is the ultimate color because of its ability to do what it does.” The designers are so taken with the hue that Davis devised a work of art on canvas using white plaster as the medium, essentially creating a three-dimensional monochromatic painting that hangs in the living room. Playing foil to it nearby is a hulking blackened-steel chimney that hovers above a cast-concrete fireplace, taking on the presence of minimalist sculpture.“We spent a lot of time getting the scale of the flue right,” Davis recounts. “It needed to be positioned so as not to block views outside or overwhelm anything else in the room.” Adds Meyer, “Like everything we do, we edited it down to its simplest form.”
Along with views of the ocean, the house looks over the pool, so it was essential to camouflage the adjacent pool pavilion’s roof. Landscape architect Steven Yavanian and landscape contractor James Grimes planted a green roof garden of flowers and grasses, a fitting complement to the interior’s whimsical pair of oversize pendants wrapped in seagrass. Something more serious simply would have seemed out of place here, given that on this project, nature has always had the last word.