Dorothy Berwin fell in love with the trees. “I found our house,” the filmmaker told her partner, Dominique Lévy, 12 years ago, as she described the property she had located in Bridgehampton, New York. “But you’re not going to like it.” The structure was an unremarkable shingled saltbox. To the left of it, however, three giant Japanese cedars were swaying in the breeze, and at the back of the house stood a towering white birch.

Despite Berwin’s dire prediction, Lévy—a formidable art dealer with galleries in New York and London—was smitten even before she reached the end of the driveway. Wetlands stretched along one side. “I think the magic is, you don’t see neighbors,” she explains. The couple took the plunge.

At the time they were looking for a retreat for their family—which in 2004 included Caleb, now 22, who is Berwin’s son from a former marriage, and Samuel, 14. The brood has since grown to include another son, Solal, 6. “This house was meant to be a place where the kids could have all their friends over,” Lévy says. What it’s not, she states emphatically, is “a big house in the Hamptons” intended to impress. Rather, it is a sanctuary for the family. “You can feel them slowing down with the landscape and living outside,” says Paula Hayes, an artist and landscape designer who laid out the gardens and sited an orchard. Observes Berwin: “It tastes good, it smells good, it feels good.”

She and Lévy determined they couldn’t demolish the house without jeopardizing the white birch. Instead, they brought in architectural designer Francis D’Haene of D’Apostrophe Design to craft a thoughtful addition. Adapting the existing building to contain the kitchen, dining room, library, and two guest rooms, D’Haene added a perpendicular annex, with a double-height square living room and the main bedrooms. “We wanted it to be intimate, with spaces where we could be separate and be together, with sensuousness and light,” Lévy says.

In the midst of construction, at D’Haene’s suggestion, they removed the shingles and covered both the original structure and the annex in white stucco. “The simple architecture of the house is better served with a smoother finish,” D’Haene explains. After the completion of the first phase, the clients and architect built a poolhouse with a nearby Jacuzzi and fire pit to facilitate outdoor entertaining. Following that, they added a one-story wing, with a sleeping area for the younger generation, and at the same time finished the basement to create staff quarters. The poolhouse is clad inside and out in reclaimed barnwood, and the children’s wing is faced with a combination of barnwood and stucco.





1 / 15 Chevron Chevron The poolhouse is wrapped entirely in reclaimed barnwood.

Because the land slopes downward, Hayes created a rock garden near the house to absorb runoff and prevent flooding. She intricately interlaced brown boulders from a Pennsylvania quarry with flowering plants in shades of blue, lavender, cream, gray, and green. The rock garden satisfies the professional instincts of both of her clients. When you walk the meandering path, it unfolds like a film, with the clumps of plants exerting a sculptural presence. Indeed, Berwin and Lévy regard the rock garden as one of several sculptures in the landscape, along with the white marble snowman and Buddha, from the “One Sun—One Moon” series by Peter Regli, that they have placed near the Japanese cedars. There are also outdoor sculptures by Mark Handforth, Sam Durant, and Franz West, and two by Thomas Houseago.