Where indoors meets outdoors, and too much is not enough

New York

TWENTY-foot-wide (6m-wide) glass walls retract electronically at the tap of a cellphone app at the over-the-top US$39.5 million furnished mansion John Kean built last year on 4 acres (16,187 sq m) in Southampton, New York. They disappear into wall pockets, blurring the distinction between indoors and out.

The living room, with its full bar, dovetails with an outdoor covered terrace lengthy enough for a banquet table for 75 guests.

"You come to the Hamptons to be outside," Mr Kean said of his 15,500-square-foot, 10-bedroom, 12 full and three half-bath mansion.

Another tap and a mesh screen comes down, enclosing the terrace and turning the geothermally cooled house into a giant screened-in porch. The screens "keep the air-conditioning in" and the pesky bugs out.

Increasingly, architects, builders, interior designers, landscape architects and homeowners in the Hamptons are bringing the indoors out, turning terraces, backyards and roof decks into a series of stylish outdoor rooms.

Mr Kean's property is at the high end of the Hamptons housing market, where the average sale price is US$1.72 million, but the melding of inside and out is a trend that can be seen even in more modest homes.

"In the Hamptons, the outdoors is more important than the indoors," said Gary DePersia, an associate broker with the Corcoran Group, who has the listing.

"Houses are being designed to accentuate that", including at least two that he has represented that have underground grottos offering aquarium-like views into outdoor swimming pools, he said.

For Hamptonites from the city, "it is such a rare thing to have outdoor space", said Christine Gachot, an owner of Gachot Studios, an interior design firm based in Manhattan. Depending on how far clients are willing to go, "it is like having a whole extra house".

Susan Breitenbach, an associate broker with the Corcoran Group, said when owners, who live in Manhattan, come to the Hamptons, "they want their outdoor space". "They want their loggias, their terraces, their barbecue, their roof deck, their fireplace, their two outdoor showers in the master bedroom and outdoor Jacuzzis, one in the pool, another on the roof."

Quincy Hammond, a Manhattan-based landscape architect who frequently designs Hamptons gardens, said that in the past decade, the choices for aluminium, wicker, resin and teak outdoor furniture and fabric options have become "almost as impressive as what they have for the inside".

Trying to duplicate the indoor experience outside, in the last four years, Bill D'Agata, a Quogue-based pool and landscape designer, built pavilions in six East End backyards, with prices ranging from US$600,000 to US$1 million each.

"All the amenities that exist inside the main house are now found outside the main house," he said, including apps that can remotely set the spa to 98 deg F (36.6 deg C), and turn on the lights or outdoor speakers, while the homeowner is still on the drive there.

Swimming pools are the quintessential outdoor playrooms. But in the Hamptons and other luxury destinations, chaise longues are no longer confined to the deck.

Greg Darvin, owner of Pristine Pools in East Hampton, took a cue from resort pools his clients have enjoyed in the Caribbean or Indonesia.

Many of the 25 to 30 in-ground saltwater pools he builds a year have "sun shelves" in shallow water for chaise longues and shade umbrellas, making it easy to dip your feet in the water without getting out of your chair.

James Maloney and Philip Judson entertain every other weekend in the oasis-like backyard of their three-bedroom, three-bath home on half an acre in Northwest Woods, part of East Hampton.

"When people come here, they are awestruck. It looks like a resort pool," said Mr Judson, an agent at Halstead.

Flames shoot out of a fire feature in the Corinthian blue-grey granite stone wall that wraps around the back of the pool with two waterfalls, part of a redo by Mr Darvin four years ago.

The pool has a sun shelf with chaise longues, marine-grade stainless-steel tables and shade umbrellas. Below the shelf is a narrower seating ledge for sipping cocktails.

An outdoor living room is on the limestone patio and an outdoor dining room sits off the master bedroom. Music is piped outside.

Ms Hammond, the landscape architect, said that the indoor-outdoor trend came from California. "We want a reason to be outside other than the sake of just being outside and gardening."

She uses hedges "to create the boundaries of an outdoor room" and provide enclosures, with trees for shade and "an overhead sense of protection". A curved bench under a colonnade in one Southampton flower garden she designed becomes a "separate garden room, like a library in the house".

Vegetable gardens in raised beds, which her clients clamour for, are "like a pantry", providing food for outdoor kitchens and outdoor dining.

For those with a vista, roof decks are in vogue. Pamela Glazer, a Southampton-based architect, cut out half a tall attic to create a roof deck as part of a US$525,000 renovation of two 1960s homes cobbled together in Hither Hills.

In East Hampton, Peter Wilson, a retired corporate lawyer, and Scott Sanders, an interior designer, erected a giant lifeguard chair on the roof of their US$16.9 million, 3.2-acre estate to see the ocean.

Ms Gachot of Gachot Studios, who furnished a roof deck on a US$13 million home in Sagaponack, said that there was "definitely a request to create as many terraces as possible".

As Ms Glazer put it, in the Hamptons, "too much is not enough". NYTIMES