For New York City resident Ed Fogarty, it had been a long-standing dream to build a home outside the city. In 2015, he came across an inspiring site in East Hampton, New York, adjacent to a 17-acre working horse farm—land that could never be developed. The location, though a short stroll from the main village of East Hampton, felt a world away. “You’re surrounded by clear blue sky and open spaces, with no other houses in sight,” says Ed. “It felt secluded in a way that was nice coming from the bustling city.”

After purchasing the property, Ed engaged his longtime friend, Workshop/APD founding principal Matt Berman, to help design a permanent residence for him and his partner, Tim McMullan. Berman proposed positioning the home to take advantage of the site’s idyllic views. “We loved the idea of tucking the house along the tree line on one edge of the property, to open views up to the rest of the site,” says associate principal Tyler Marshall. The multigabled structure is a nod to the bucolic surroundings. “We like to take a contextual approach to design, and the area is historically agrarian,” Marshall adds. “So playing with an agrarian vernacular made sense here.”

The idea of a black house—conceived by Ed—was a key part of the plan from the beginning. “I wanted it to be different from the typical white and cedar shake homes you see all over the Hamptons,” he says, an approach that resonated with Berman and Marshall’s architectural vision.

Recalling seeing yakisugi—a deeply charred wood also known as shou sugi ban—on a trip to Japan, Ed turned to Nakamoto Forestry for the home’s exterior cladding. The richly saturated black variety used on the home—Pika-Pika® yakisugi with a black alkyd oil finish—is burned and brushed to achieve a textural quality that complements the surrounding landscape.

“This dark exterior palette allows the home to recede into the tree line and its shadows in a way that a more traditional white home would not,” Marshall adds. “Instead of molding the site to the home, or to some stereotypical expectation of what a Hamptons home should be, we set out to shape the home to the site.”

Read the full home tour at dwell.com/nakamoto.

—

Head back to the May/June 2025 issue homepage