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"View Slideshow\n\nBefore it became a summer destination for the wealthy and prominent, the East End of Long Island, New York, was a haven for artists, from William Merritt Chase to Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, who were entranced by the area's expansive horizons and pearlescent light. And even today the area calls forth a sympathetic response from those who are attuned to such things\u2014people like the couple who engaged the designer Thad Hayes to create a serene retreat on a beachfront spit of land between the ocean and a bay in Water Mill.\n\n\"We told Thad we wanted it to be calm and simple, like the landscape\u2014full of light and air,\" says the wife; and Hayes complied. With a r\u00E9sum\u00E9 that includes five years studying landscape design, he understood immediately how to bring the house's interiors into harmonic convergence with its setting. In addition, he had the benefit of having worked with the couple before, on a ski house in Park City, Utah, and a New York apartment on Fifth Avenue that balances 18th- and 19th-century furnishings with contemporary ones against a backdrop of extraordinary 20th-century art (see Architectural Digest, April 2002). \"I knew they didn't like overwrought design, or anything self-conscious,\" he says.\n\nThe couple's architect, Frederick Stelle, had razed the existing 1980s-vintage house on the lot; but in the interests of speed and efficiency, it was decided to build the new house within the footprint of the old. The new structure was clad in a skin of Alaskan yellow cedar that turns a mellow gold in the sun; inside the house, the same wood continues along the entrance wall, literally bringing the exterior to the interior. Working with the paint specialist Donald Kaufman, Hayes devised a palette ranging from \"pale oyster to mushroom\" for the other interior walls. \"All the colors came from the light and the water,\" says the designer.\n\nOther finishes, and fabrics, were dictated by the functionality the clients insisted on. \"We wanted everything easy to clean,\" says the wife. \"This is a beach house, and we're going in and out of doors all the time, so I asked him to make it so we could practically put a drain in the floor and hose everything down.\" Hayes met her halfway by finding a collection of vinyl tatami-style rugs that can be vacuumed or sponge-mopped. The client loved them. \"Let's use these everywhere,\" she said. Hayes also upholstered sofas, chairs and ottomans\u2014many of which he designed and built specifically for the project\u2014with cotton and linen mixed with synthetics and topped a low table in the family room with a sturdy fabric so the couple's children, then both teenagers, could put their feet up with impunity.\n\nDespite their emphasis on practicality, however, these owners have highly evolved tastes in art, objects and furnishings. They've hung a careful selection of Modern and contemporary paintings and prints on the walls. And they appreciate the unusual pieces Hayes sought out to give a distinctive texture to his designs. Perhaps the wife's favorite object is what she calls a \"Sputnik chandelier\"\u2014a relative of the ones at the Metropolitan Opera House\u2014which brings drama to the double-height living room; but a close second would be a pair of teak slipper chairs designed by Pierre Jeanneret for the 1950s new city of Chandigarh, India. \"We were so excited to get those,\" she recalls.\n\nElsewhere Hayes has included Mies van der Rohe chairs, a 1957 mahogany-and-gilt-bronze table by Monti G.P.A., a T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings mirror and several pieces by George Nakashima, whose sculptural furniture is often carved from a single block of distinctive wood. The mixture of classic midcentury-Modern pieces with contemporary (and even some antique) furnishings was conscious, not random\u2014but the editorial thinking behind Hayes's choices is more than simple eclecticism. \"I like finding pieces that were designed 50 or 60 years ago that look as if they could have been designed last year,\" he says.\n\nBoth the house's floor plan and the furniture groupings subtly dramatize the spectacular setting between the tranquil bay and the more turbulent ocean. On the first floor, where the oceanfront dunes block a view of the sea, most rooms are oriented toward the bay; on the second floor, the master bedroom flows from sea to bay, with a seating area turned toward the bayfront and the bed facing the ocean beach, where the waves are the first thing one sees on waking in the morning. It's a gift the owners seem grateful for. \"It's like being on a boat,\" says the wife. \"A boat in a calm sea. The house is pure Thad\u2014calm and serene. You never have a discouraging moment with him.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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