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Modern, D'Auria assured his client, didn't have to mean cold; it merely implied a more casual, open plan, natural materials and a fluid relation between interior and exterior. Outside, the structure looks similar to the classic cedar-shingle houses that dot Montauk Highway, but with a modern twist—"No fussy details, no painted trims or fretwork," D'Auria says. The most pronounced difference is that D'Auria raised the house nine feet above flood level, which is apparent by the steps to the front entrance and the drop-off in the back.

Visitors enter a low-ceilinged foyer defined by the underside of a steel-and-cable staircase. This opens immediately to a modern space with ceilings that shoot to 25 feet at their peak. Seeking to use as little sheetrock as possible, D'Auria and Milite chose durable, light-colored woods to unite the interior spaces. Walls are swathed in cedar siding and floors are a bleached and whitewashed heart pine. "It's a very tight palette that's repeated throughout the house," D'Auria says. "That allowed the rooms to flow into each other." Milite adds that the prodigious use of wood also achieved his objective of making the home a place that would "feel beachy in the summer but warm, intimate and cozy in the winter."

To make the main level's soaring layout less imposing, D'Auria broke up the space with separations that include a narrow, double-sided fireplace dividing the living room and kitchen and a media room with a lower ceiling tucked off of one corner but still open to the main space. "People can be in all parts of the house and still communicate," observes the architect, "but it still feels as if they have separate environments."

Milite had almost all of the furniture custom-designed by Andrianna Shamaris, owner of eponymous stores in SoHo and Malibu (and, next summer, the Hamptons). The basic idea, says Shamaris, was "to do less pieces, but the pieces we did were going to be huge."