The Life Aquatic

The reinvention of a waterfront retreat in New York became an occasion to envision a miniature village-elegant and easygoing at the same time. CHLOE SCHAMA pays a visit.

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When architect Bastien Halard was brought in to freshen up a 1917 Long Island home, he initially W thought it would be a fairly quick job. Some paint, maybe a little restoration of the mechanicals. A pool had recently been installed by his wife, the landscape designer Miranda Brooks; before then, there hadn't been much need for one. The property is located on an island, and the Pincus family, who has used the getaway as their vacation home for several decades, had simply turned to the brackish inlets of the surrounding Peconic Bay for their bathing, launching paddleboards between the marshy grasses. When Brooks put in the blue-stone-paved pool-the first step in a gradual reimagining of the grounds the imperative had been to preserve the sight line to the shore and to match the surrounding hue, to make it feel more like a pond, a gentle continuation of the bay side landscape.