CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/28/2023

Blue Dream, "like nothing that has come before it"

Featured photographs, all by Iwan Baan, are reproduced from Blue Dream and the Legacy of Modernism in the Hamptons, the new release from noted architecture critic Paul Goldberger and publisher DelMonico Books documenting the visionary East Hampton home of the late collector, photographer and philanthropist Julie Reyes Taubman and her husband Robert Taubman, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro with builder Ed Bulgin, landscape architect Michael Boucher and designer Michael Lewis. Goldberger writes, “Blue Dream is like nothing that has come before it, and that, in and of itself, ties it more closely than anything built in the Hamptons in more than a generation to the great desire of modernism, the quest, to paraphrase Ezra Pound, to forever make it new. … Behind every notable house—and many un-notable ones—is the story of a client as much as an architect, the story of how they joined together to create something that neither party could have done on its own. This is particularly true in the case of Blue Dream. The clients began with a love of the ocean, a love of modernism, the idea of making it new, and they sought a house that would weave these things together. It embraces paradox, since it is an ode to collecting, which is fundamentally conservative, and to designing in a new way, which is fundamentally radical. It is about technology, it is about traditional craft, it is about the land, and it is about objects. It is both a private meditation and a public statement.”