CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/24/2013

Fire Island Modernist: Horace Gifford and the Architecture of Seduction

Featured image is the living room of Sloan House in Fire Island Pines, designed by architect Horace Gifford in 1972. Reproduced from this summer's must-have architecture monograph, Fire Island Modernist: Horace Gifford and the Architecture of Seduction, published by Metropolis Books & Gordon de Vries Studio, "the Sloan residence was the consummate example of Gifford's mature period," according to author Christopher Rawlins. "Norton and Marlo Sloan - one of many heterosexual couples who embraced the freewheeling culture of the Pines - commissioned a luxurious home whose smooth volumes appeared to have washed up on their site. Although any physical resemblance to Louis Kahn's work had receded, it still bore his 'order of the castle,' in which complex ancillary rooms surround a rectangular central space and endow the facade with a rippled presence. Curved spaces extended, cloverlike, from a lofty living room animated by the painterly slash of a diagonal stairway. Mirrors created slivers of light above the fireplace. Positioned opposite full-height expanse of glass, a mirrored wall brought the ocean view to both sides of the space. A leather ottoman bridged the conversation pit. Outside, a lazy-Susan lounge rotated to catch the best rays for the sun-worshipping Marlo Sloan. Upstairs, a DeStijl-like composition of bunk beds housed the Sloans' four young children.