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"View Slideshow\n\nOpposites attract, goes the adage, and sometimes they really do. They do, anyway, when Allan Greenberg and Victoria Hagan, the architect and the interior designer, bring the two together. Their matchmaking began when a Connecticut couple bought an unusual house in Greenwich. Not just any house, their purchase was a late-19th-century extravaganza, an ebullient structure with small Doric columns and big Doric columns, with dormer windows, a widow's walk and a run of balconies\u2014just about everything, in short, that an architect of the 1880s or 1890s could think of. \"It's a shotgun marriage between Greek Revival and classical, set in a far distant land,\" says Greenberg. \"It's a little mad, but it's also marvelous, an extraordinary piece of architecture.\"\n\nNeeding more room for themselves and their children, the couple asked Greenberg to design an addition, enough space for a family room and kitchen on the first floor and a master suite and exercise room on the second. A master of restrained classical styles, Greenberg first thought of extending what was already there. Such an add-on seemed a little tame, however, and he then envisioned an altogether different space\u2014a wood-and-glass conservatory. Even that seemed a little too quiet for the bold contrast, the spirited dialogue, he wanted between the old and the new. And what could be bolder\u2014or more spirited\u2014than an uncompromising structure of steel and glass? \"Yes, let's make it more modern,\" said the wife. \"Not more modern,\" countered Greenberg. \"More like Mies van der Rohe.\"\n\nGreenberg's steel-and-glass addition was all light from the beginning. \"A house for all seasons,\" Hagan calls it.\n\n\"I love light, and I love white,\"says the wife, and light and white were what Greenberg and Hagan proceeded to give her. In the old house the architect carved out more windows to brighten what had been a dark dining room. His steel-and-glass addition was all light from the beginning, with unobstructed views of a large property that has a long slope to the road. \"A house for all seasons,\" Hagan calls it, and even in the winter those inside feel part of the natural world they see outside.\n\nVictorian embellishment and smooth 21st-century steel and glass\u2014styles more different could scarcely be imagined. Yet in subtle ways Greenberg's addition mirrors the late-19th-century original. The floor and ceiling heights line up together, for instance, and the Doric columns of the old house are mimicked by the addition's steel I-beam columns. \"Mine is a modern interpretation of the original,\" says the architect. \"I liken my building to a novel by James Joyce. The house itself is more like one by William Thackeray, George Eliot or Charles Dickens.\"\n\nEverybody has a favorite author, and for her inspiration Hagan might choose J. K. Rowling. Rowling, Harry Potter's godmother, has her wizards, and the designer is something of a wizard herself\u2014a wizard of whites who sees a multitude of possibilities in that color's many tints and shades. White dominates the exteriors of both the house and the addition, and, under Hagan's direction, it is also the thread that connects the two interiors.\n\n\"It was important to let people appreciate the beauty of the old home,\" says Hagan. \"It has a distinct, cozy personality, and we used a warmer white on the walls.\" One challenge was the clients' request for an unusually long dining table, long enough to seat 16. \"The obvious choice for the table was wood,\" Hagan adds. \"But that wouldn't have had the lightness we wanted, so we designed a table of onyx, which has a soft glow when it is lit from below.\"\n\nWhite dominates both exteriors, and, under Hagan's direction, it is also the thread that connects the two interiors.\n\n\"You can classify Victoria's interiors as minimalist,\" observes Greenberg, \"but they never look empty, as so many minimal interiors do. They are always rich.\" That richness is on full display in the glass-walled family room, where the family spends most of its time. White is again the color of choice\u2014for the leather-upholstered sofas, for the draperies and for the top of the low table. The wife wanted even more white. \"She likes a very pure white,\" says Hagan. But the designer convinced her that too much of a good thing is too much of a good thing. \"Victoria calmed me down a bit,\" the wife says, and gray was the color chosen for the carpet and the club chairs.\n\n\"An exercise in contrasts,\" Hagan calls the house and its new neighbor, the exuberant traditional and the Bauhaus modern. But it is also a kind of marriage, a marriage made all the stronger because the partners seem so different yet, in their strength and spirit, so much alike."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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