Life in balance

Speaking to the appeal of their own home in “Life in Balance”, partners Doron Sabag and Jim Hoffman of SBP Homes concur,
“It’s the combination of a strong modern statement with an underlying traditional foundation”.
The sophisticated simplicity reflects the pair’s edited approach to both architecture and design.

From the outside, this house nestled into 14 acres of Greenwich land feels like it would be right at home in the previous century.
Inside a cautiously modern approach brings the home into “transitional” focus. The perfect mix.

It makes sense that a design team would end up selling most of the houses they work, but this house,which sits on 14 acres adjacent to 240 acres of Audubon-protected land with sweeping views of a pond, hills and trees, is different. “People have threatened never to come see us again if we move,” Hoffman says. Being my own client, I’m not very hard on myself. I might know I’m about to make a mistake, but I like to experience not knowing if my vision is exactly what I imagine. I’ll deal with it and move on.”

That kind of relaxed attitude is borne of experience. Together the pair has completed more than 75 design projects of so many different styles that they can afford to treat their own home with combination of playful experimentation-evidenced in the black-and-white barn/pool house furniture inspired by Dutch design icon Piet Boon, or the plastic chandeliers they’ve installed in the bedrooms that add a pop of busy texture to the otherwise streamlined space- and a sense of deep history.

They refer to the home’s look as “cautiously modern”, and the aesthetic as “transitional,” somewhere between the Georgian colonial original and a playful-yet-restrained approach to textures and furniture inside.

By Eva Hagberg Fisher
Photography by George Ross