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HARIRI + HARIRI EXPAND ON THEIR ORIGINAL HOUSE DESIGN BY ADDING AN ARTIST STUDIO FOR A PASSIONATE PAINTER AND HIS WIFE

It is an odd proposition for a top architect to design a spec house and then create a highly-customized addition to the same site. Yet that is exactly the story of this artist's Sagaponack studio designed by sisters Gisue and Mojgan Hariri of Hariri + Hariri. Initially, they had been commissioned by the late developer Coco Brown to design one of his first Houses at Sagaponac. As Brown put it to the sisters, he wanted the modernist subdivision to be a museum of architecture.

Helping him in the development was architect Richard Meier, who consulted on the project and helped select the architects. Howard Lazar and Heidi Banks bought the Hariri + Hariri house and had immediate plans for change to the property, or as they saw it, improvement. Lazar, a painter with a burgeoning career, needed a studio that would allow him to concentrate on his work. "From the start we knew we wanted to work with Gisue and Mojgan," recalls Banks. "They're one of the few architecture firms that can make modernism livable. We knew they would respect the property as they had in the main building."

The main house is elevated from the ground as though it were a sculptural object floating in space. "We had been asked to create a work of art. But where to begin if we had no client guiding us?" explains Gisue Hariri. Studying the work of various artists, they came upon the sculptures of Diego Giacometti as a starting point; they admired his minimal use of detailing to get at the essence of human beings. "Applying that same logic to the house meant that we could create a luxurious space with just the bare necessities so that anybody could move in. This house, which was the first one built on the site, has the relatively simple qualities of modern sculpture," continues Gisue. Interestingly, Lazar's paintings have a bit of Giacometti's stripped-down feeling that resonates with an emotional impact.