Leib Follows Urban Clientele East

There’s new blood in the architecture and design world on the South Fork. Leib Designs in New York City started expanding east this year with a growing number of builds and smaller installation projects on Long Island.

Owner Assaf Leib has broken ground on a five-bedroom, 4.5-bath residence on North Haven to keep up with his Manhattan clientele during the summer months.

Mr. Leib has been making the final touches on 11 Goodwood Road. Surrounded by drywall and studs in the 5,000-square-foot modern home, he reflected on his eye for minimalist architecture, designing everything from individual penthouses to office spaces in urban landscapes that include the Upper West Side and Greenwich Village since 2011.

The Press: Why do you involve yourself in every aspect of the building process, not just design?

Assaf Leib: On paper, I am an industrial designer. I am from Israel. I studied at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. The architecture part was always there, too. I studied at Politecnico Di Milano in Italy. But I’ve studied architecture for as long as I can remember. I was very young. I would sit on a bench in front of a beautiful building I liked, and I would sketch it. I was 10, maybe 11 years old. Just by sitting outside, I would imagine and create like a blueprint—for instance, from the size of the windows, I would design where a kitchen would go and create my own layout for the space. Even as a kid, I always wanted to improve the homes I was familiar with. My family’s home, my grandmother’s, my friends—I always saw an error in the layout and an opportunity to build and create spaces, yes for storage, but also for optimal comfort. It is part of my nature as an industrial designer to invent and make the next best thing. A house is a machine of living. It can be improved.

What improvements do you see [yourself] making the most frequently?

Today, we are building more green houses in an effort to be more eco-friendly and conscience. To a certain point, it isn’t affordable yet to be green—unless you want to add thousands of dollars to the build.

Smart technology in homes is another new and sometimes not as pricey option. Here, we have heated floors all over the house. Many times in a city apartment, I recommend a lot of technologies to make the resident feel more comfortable and suited to your, well, iPhone, like raising the air conditioning or turning off the lights. You’re always with your phone, so you can control your home.

And for a North Haven residence? What have you designed here?

I love the beautiful shape and definition of the house. You have the entertainment area, which is basically surrounded by glass and cement. You have a ceiling covered by wood to warm up the space. You have a section in the middle that includes a very modern fireplace in a small cutout. It provides a good separation between the living area and the kitchen. Then you move to a different wing. This wing is for privacy. The nature of the room changes. The public space is open and has a modern, colder concrete design. The private is warmer and wooden. It’s the bedrooms, the family room. You have the basement, which is going to serve as a playroom for the kids—with an additional guest bedroom down there. In the middle, between the two elements, the concrete and the wood, you have the feature of the water. The outdoor pool, typically you don’t see it so close to the house like you see here. Unlike other homes, the pool is a feature of the home and not of the landscape and the yard. The inside and the outside play together and complement each other. From the rear of the home, it is a glass house. Trying to break the convention of the four walls to enjoy being in nature and the outdoors. It’s my hope that the lighting surrounding the pool will illuminate the home.

What made you venture east to work on this prefabricated build? It doesn’t seem your style.

I was hired personally by my client. A very nice gentleman who has a family and lives in a townhouse in the city that I did for another client. I had helped him with a small redesign. A little bit of small talk later, and I was hired to complete their prefab project. I have never done a prefab before. I usually do everything from start to finish. In this case, the owner already bought the land, and had an idea in place for his home. I was hired to spec out everything and improve on that design to make it more modern and open. Basically, he wanted me to mimic what I did to his apartment in the city. Prefabs are challenging. There are pieces that are put together based on what’s written down on paper. That’s not what I do. Like a sculpture, I am hands on when I mold a house into a home. As an architect, I have to use my body to make sure it is comfortable. When I walk, there needs to be a flow. My clients are spending a lot of money on building a house. How else will I know if there is a mistake? As for why I am here, this is where my city clients are for a large part of the year. It’s competitive out here, and I hope to use this as a jumping point for more clients.