ARCHITECTURE,DESIGN,HAMPTONS

The Latest Trend In Architecture For Summer Homes: Black Is The New Black

Beach homes with black exteriors are some of the most bold, beautiful and serene in the Hamptons.

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Madonna’s Bridgehampton black home

By Jim Servin

Connect the dots: from Calvin Klein’s sleek black wood-and-glass box on Meadow Lane in Southampton, to Steven Klein’s all-black West Kill farm and Madonna’s black mansion in Bridgehampton, to Jonathan Adler and Simon Doonan’s modern-rustic retreat in charcoal on Shelter Island, black summer homes are sending a message of sophisticated individualism.

“They are very common in Japan, and whenever we were there, we vowed to someday have a black house. At first, our neighbors thought the house looked very ominous and coffin-like,” says designer Jonathan Adler of the four-bedroom, single-story compound he and Barneys New York honcho Simon Doonan built five years ago. “But with a bit of bamboo, some dune grasses and a few Japanese pines, the house went from ominous to serene. A black house is very quiet. We’re on Gardiners Bay, and my favorite view of my house is from my paddleboard.”

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Jonathan Adler and Simon Doonan’s four bedroom black home, Shelter Island, NY

Effortlessly avant-garde and reliably traditional, black is versatile, its impact strong. “Black has always been the coolest color,” says location scout Jenny Landey.

“People who own black houses,” she continues, “are individuals with a strong sense of style.” Her friend, model and interior designer T.R. Pescod, agrees: “Black homes have always been around, but never as chic as they have been in the last couple of years.”

Ed Bulgin, who built Calvin Klein’s $75 million beach home, says that black homes are often the pricier ones: “People who choose darker exterior colors are usually more artistic,” he says. “The black houses we’ve done are more challenging in design and construction, because the client pushes the design envelope, which drives the cost up.”

Architect Blaze Makoid chose a black exterior for the four-bedroom, 2,900-square-foot modern home he and his wife, Tracy Mitchell, executive director of Bay Street Theater, built on Morris Cove in Sag Harbor 10 years ago. “It was a reaction to the typical gambrel-roof-shingles-with-white-trim kind of house; we were trying to swing the pendulum in the opposite direction,” he says. While Makoid considered an ancient Japanese siding technique called shou sugi ban, which blackens and seals wood by burning it, he decided on a solid black exterior stain instead.

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