<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"New Life on Long Island\nBringing a Moribund Ranch House Back From the Brink\n\"Could we take the ranch house building type and make it something else?\" asked Lee Mindel (with Peter Shelton, right), of Shelton, Mindel Associates. The architects reconfigured a low-slung 1960s residence on Long Island for Michael and Carol Newman.\nThe living room ceiling was pitched with skylight windows.\nThe architects raised it and extended the room. \"All the rooms were similarly scaled, with varied proportions,\" says Shelton. Donghia sofa fabric. Holly Hunt leather on chairs at rear.\n\"The living room fireplace was too Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm,\" says Mindel.\nThe hearth was enlarged and framed with a minimalist mantel. The architects decorated the house with 20th-century pieces, such as a 1927 leather chair by Fritz Henningsen.\n\"We wanted the dining room to feel horizontal to differentiate it from the other rooms,\" Mindel explains. \"While the scale is intimate, we used reflective paint on the ceiling and a glass-topped table of our own design so the space would be bright and sparkly.\"\nThe plans called for a new hall and for the living room to extend into the garden.\n\"The property was the residence's biggest asset, but it was poorly planned,\" says Mindel.\n\"We moved the pool to a spot lower on the site because it had been right up against the house, blocking access to the garden, and it was an eyesore in the winter.\"\n\"We created a series of cascading, sculptural walls to contain the contours of the land,\" says Mindel. \"They're built of the indigenous stone that's used in the large estates in the area, but we didn't copy the old walls,\" says Mindel. \"We just alluded to them.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/mindel-slideshow-022001?slide=1>