In the Hamptons, where braggadocio is practically a building material, there’s something almost head-scratching about a house designed to look humbler than it is. A visitor arriving at this cedar-shingled house in Southampton would be forgiven for assuming it was originally a whaler’s home erected two centuries ago. “When you drive up to it you might think, Oh, it’s just this little three-bedroom cottage with a center hall and a tiny living room in the front,” says architect Gil Schafer, a mischievous grin on his face.
Plot twist: The charming, low-key-looking residence nestled beside a graceful copper beech-tree and bordered by a split rail fence climbing with roses turns out to be a 12,000-square-foot house built in 2023. The modest Colonial-style façade stretches back into an elongated L-shape and then takes a sharp turn to form another wing that is all but invisible from the front. Among the expansive comforts contained within this architectural sleight of hand are a sun-drenched living room, Nancy Meyers–movie–worthy kitchen, scullery, butler’s pantry, two porches, den, knotty pine-paneled office, seven bedrooms, and a top-floor bunk room that sleeps an additional five guests.
“You don’t get the full picture at the front door,” adds Schafer, a founder of the AD100 firm Schafer Buccellato Architects. “I love that kind of stealth.”
This artful deception nearly didn’t happen. When London-based homeowners Claudia Blumberg and her husband purchased the property in 2019, they were on track to build something far more conventional. “We wanted something beachy that could accommodate lots of friends and family, with one large room where we could all gather,” says Claudia. What they did not want was “a sprawling McMansion” with overly formal rooms they’d never actually use. In search of a sympathetic collaborator, Claudia cold-called London-based interior designer Rita Konig, whose relaxed, collected style she admired. “She was so approachable, and I felt like she got us.”
The AD100 designer quickly diagnosed the problem. “What you need is a pretty house that feels added onto, which gives you the big room you want but still feels like a small house,” she told the couple. “I don’t know how to do this, but Gil does.” Konig rang up the architect, made the introductions, and soon the assembled team was off and running.
The two AD100 talents have worked together on multiple projects over the past decade, developing the kind of creative shorthand that grows from shared beliefs: comfort, the emotional pull of classical forms, the idea that a home should feel evolved rather than decorated—even a weakness for well-stocked bookcases. “We both love a house with books,” Schafer says. Konig agrees: “In this house there are books everywhere. They’re not for show.”
Their vision for the Blumbergs’ home took shape as a sort of architectural palimpsest. “We made up a kind of mythology about the way the house grew,” Schafer explains. “It starts with this modest front cottage that was added onto, with each addition reflecting a slightly different moment.” That narrative logic guided every design decision, from the crisp Federalist detailing at the entry to the more relaxed articulation at the back, including a level change upstairs where the house makes its L-shaped turn—like a farmhouse extended over generations. “These moments of transition add a lovely quirkiness and also stop the enormousness,” says Konig.
Konig’s interiors further this narrative of accumulated history. She layered the home with upholstered pieces in unfussy prints, striped rugs, warm lighting, and a sense of ease that feels more English country house than East End trophy home. In the entry, the traditional moldings are juxtaposed with raffia wallpaper block-printed with hula dancers. “I’d been wanting to use that paper for years and no one ever let me,” says Konig. “I even wondered, ‘Have I pushed this too far?’ But it really does work, oddly.”
Even the pocket bar—tucked into a niche just off the library—was designed not as a showpiece, but as another thoughtful gesture toward how people actually live. “There are a lot of drinking spots in this house,” Konig notes.
That same instinct for usability shaped the house’s outdoor areas. Schafer designed the house to pivot around the 150-year-old copper beech-tree that stands at the property’s heart, turning a design challenge into an organizing principle. The resulting angles and setbacks gave landscape architect Edmund Hollander a natural framework for creating intimate spaces. His planting plan carves the nearly two-acre lot into a sequence of soft-edged outdoor rooms connected by lushly bordered graveled allées. There’s a wildflower meadow out front, a sheltered space nestled between the house and the copper beech, and a dining area surrounded by Zelkova trees and lit with café lights. “I love giving a family ways to explore their own property,” says Hollander.
Together, Schafer, Konig, and Hollander have pulled off something rare in the neighborhood—a new old house that quietly makes the case for comfort over flash. “It really does feel like it grew over time,” says Claudia. It’s the ultimate conjuring trick: a house that looks small, lives large, and feels like it’s always been there.
This young family’s Hamptons home is featured in AD’s July/August issue. Never miss a story when you subscribe to AD.
