WHO…
needs color when you can achieve such drama with black and white? This updated take on traditional barn architecture is the Hamptons home of interior designer Michael Del Piero, who leaned heavily on whites and darks to create its impressive interior. The new construction by architect Kathryn Fee offered an airy envelope framed by floors of polished concrete, vast panes of glass and white plaster walls, all illuminated by the fabled light of Long Island’s East End.
THE MINIMALIST…
environment is tailor-made for displaying the unusual finds for which the Chicago- and Hamptons-based designer, an expert curator of antique and vintage material, is known. She sourced objects and art from all over the globe to supplement custom furnishings of her own design.
WITH ADMIRABLE…
restraint, Del Piero allowed the white walls of the living room to rise to the peaked ceiling without embellishment, save for a few adventurous accessories like a wooly mammoth tusk on the antique-lumber mezzanine. A snow-white modular sofa of Del Piero’s design, a classic walnut side table by Eero Saarinen and an intriguing antler chair found in Michigan show to advantage against a wide black fireplace wall.
THE OUTDOORS…
is never far from sight. Windows look out on fields of ornamental grasses, against which such simple but bold accessories like a weathered wood table and overscaled, rough-textured vase stand out in high relief.
THE FURNISHINGS…
in a guest room came from a far-flung variety of sources: the vintage steel bed from an Illinois flea market, the shaggy flokati rug from a buying jaunt to Greece, the wooden desk from France and the vintage mid-century sconces from 1stDibs.
THERE IS…
never a dull visual moment, whether it’s a square stone sink, an attenuated metal sculpture or a modernist wing chair covered in nubby fabric and set against even nubbier floor-to-ceiling drapes.
THE BLACK…
kitchen cabinetry echoes the color of the exterior’s vertical board cladding, with exposed beams of unfinished wood further evidence of an unflinchingly rustic approach. Furnishings include a well-worn farm table and an assertively shaped modernist chair by Swiss architect Pierre Jeanneret.
THE LANDSCAPING…
too, gets its strength from bold simplicity. Waving grasses and a tall evergreen hedge provide a green backdrop for a steel portico housing a rakish pair of updated Adirondack chairs.
THE DESIGNER’S…
unabashed love of texture is on display in the pool house, where a woolly pillow sham and a coverlet with thick rope tassels sit upon a custom black oak daybed designed by Del Piero. An abstract wall hanging by Chicago-based sculptor Lucy Slivinski, reminiscent of steel wool, hangs above, while a Saarinen pedestal table strikes an iconic note.
SERENE…
but never boring, sparely furnished but richly textured, this modernist barnlike dwelling ideally suits its sophisticated but casual milieu.
Design: Michael Del Piero
Architecture: Kathryn Fee
Photography: Costas Picadas
