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ARCHITECT AND DESIGNER ANDREW TAIANI GOES FROM SAND TO CASTLE CREATING HIS EAST HAMPTON BUNGALOW

"I've always known what I wanted in a house," says architect and interior designer Andrew Taiani, who has a penchant for dreaming up his projects at the beach and drawing them in the sand. "I wanted a simple beach house with generous scale and proportions, and in this case it was easy to sketch."

A few years ago, Taiani visually walked his friends through a sandy blueprint of what would eventually become a clean-lined East Hampton bungalow with an emphasis on height and space. But it took Taiani almost a year to find a suitable rectangular lot that would accommodate his design. First, the parcel needed to be long enough for the driveway he had always envisioned. Then, there had to be enough room for a parking court for his growing collection of vintage cars. Finally, he needed ample space for the gardens as he saw them—and, of course, for the 1,800-square-foot house he would build there.

Eventually, after much searching, he found the right lot, and the house that began as just a sketch in the sand finally came to be. Taiani, an admirer of Italian architect Andrea Palladio, patterned the small footprint after a Neoclassical Palladian villa's in the Veneto. Its design is really just a series of small squares arranged around a larger one, but the grandeur comes from an incessant concentration on verticality.

"The house is only one story but, for starters, it's four feet above grade," Taiani explains.