Real LI

Stormy waves crashed on the beach Saturday feet away from the luxurious Panoramic Villas in Montauk as it hosted a design challenge: “Oceans 3: Showhouse Showdown,” put on by Traditional Home Magazine, paired three New York City-based designers with their own protégée design students as a summer internship.

Pro-designer Eric Cohler teamed up with protégée Arlene Angard, Philip Gorrivan with his protégée Cindy Taylor, and Amanda Nisbet with Elizabeth Bailey (whom she actually ended up hiring). The challenge will be a reality TV special to air late 2008.

The Panoramic Villas are a “condop” turnkey residence where units range from one-bedroom to five, 1,200 square feet to 4,500 square feet, and can cost from under $2 million to more than $6 million.

The three Oceans 3 units are for sale with or without the designers’ furnishings. They also are available for summer rent (starting at $100,000). But with concierge service, porters, beach and pool attendants, on-site housekeeping, year-round staff to fully-stock refrigerators or pick up mail and dry-cleaning, and massage therapists and trainers on call, who needs — or wants — to go home at summer’s end?

Each team designed their own unit at the Villas, drawing inspiration from the environment. Throughout the units, there was a recurring nautical theme, with blues and whites drawing inspiration from the nearby water, and sunny tans drawing from the surrounding 1,000 feet of sandy private beach. “It feels like we’re on a boat,” said designer Gorrivan, referring to the proximity of the waves through the many windows.

Cohler used the blue and white nautical look while also playing with the blue and white as a mainstay of Greek design. To create the hybrid look, he mixed maritime details, such as balls of nautical rope, conch accent pieces, and even a driftwood corkscrew, with plenty of Grecian urns and details throughout the unit.

Also going with the nautical theme but with more of a “Montauk, easy-living” flair, Gorrivan hung three large deep-sea photographs of vivid jellyfish (from his personal collection) in the living room, and propped two surf boards against walls as a laid-back art-alternative.

Gorrivan raised some eyebrows, especially protégée Taylor’s, when he decided to put wood-printed wallpaper on the ceiling. Some even asked him not to do it. Instead, he toned down the wallpaper’s color to a less-shocking natural wood look and came out with a unique design statement.

Nisbet and Bailey — rather than going blue and white (which Bailey said has “been done”) — went for warm, breezy tones of sherbet orange, tan and pink throughout most of the house. Tan batik-print wallpaper carried from the main to the lower level. Downstairs a beachy, tan abaca rug lent more informality to the space. Tan, woven Abaca flooring was also used on the walls of the master bathroom.

Around the dining table, Lucite stools with replaceable seat cushions seem to be a more recession-proof investment.

Graphic, bold wallpaper was common in each design, as was artwork — such as a huge pop-art map painting in Nisbet’s unit — hearkening to the Montauk location.

-STEPHANIE KOITHAN

WHAT “Oceans 3: Showhouse Showdown,” put on by Traditional Home Magazine.
WHEN | WHERE Nov. 14 to 16 and again from Nov. 20 to 23 at the Panoramic Villas, 272 Old Montauk Hwy., Montauk.
INFO 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekends; $25 fee will benefit the Montauk Playhouse Community Center Foundation

Photo by Stephanie Koithan