The Story Behind This Modernist House Has as Many Twists and Turns as Its Architecture

livemint.com:

real estate mogul known to everyone as Bobby), who owned an oceanfront site on the east end of Long Island, searched for just the right person to design a house there. Already well-versed in contemporary architecture, Julie traveled, read and questioned anyone who might have a suggestion. She ultimately interviewed 22 architects, including several Pritzker Prize winners.

By 2006 Julie had narrowed the list of architects to three, then one. The “winning" architect completed hundreds of pages of construction documents. But in 2008, with contractor Ed Bulgin ready to begin construction, Julie decided the design wasn’t revolutionary enough for her and pulled the plug.

Even Bobby was “startled and unhappy with the abruptness of Julie’s decision," Paul Goldberger writes in a new book about the Taubmans’ quest. But she was determined to move forward, and in 2010 her friend Dennis Freedman, a former creative director of W Magazine and Barneys New York, suggested she talk to Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the one firm he believed capable of designing a house that was groundbreaking, but also buildable. The New York architects had gone from being radical outsiders to radical insiders in just over a decade.

The High Line, which opened in 2009, was their first big splash. Since then they have renovated the Museum of Modern Art, brought Lincoln Center into the 21st Century, created a striking new campus for Columbia Business School and designed a Columbia University Medical Center tower with a serpentine concrete surface that acts as floors, walls and ceilings. And that is just their contribution to the west side of Manhattan.