Designer Mark Cunningham and Architect John B. Murray Collaborate on a Martha’s Vineyard Retreat
Coastal living meets contemporary chic in this easygoing waterfront home
Mark Cunningham has a lock on effortless ease. The New York designer reliably delivers thoughtfully tailored style and seductive comfort, whether the setting is a luxurious Miami apartment, a rural New York farmhouse, or a glass-box beach house in the Hamptons. “All of our clients say that our spaces are really comfortable, beautiful but functional, and feel like them,” Cunningham says.
A recent commission to oversee the interiors of a newly built vacation retreat on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, demonstrates his deft command of sophisticated leisure. “Not too formal and not too stuffy” was the decree, Cunningham says, issued by a New York–based couple with four children and a growing art collection, which includes standout works by Alex Katz, Candida Höfer, and Oscar Murillo, among others.
“They wanted a house that had a contemporary sensibility yet retained the vernacular of the island,” explains the architect, John B. Murray, who worked in tandem with Erin de Losier, who was the associate in charge of the project. In other words, a beach house but not your typical beach house.
The couple has a long history on Martha’s Vineyard. The husband, who works in the financial world, spent summers there while growing up. When he met his future wife, they began renting cottages on the island together, eventually buying an old shingled house in Edgartown that they later tore down to build a new residence, but one that was still traditional enough to fit in with its Colonial-era neighbors.
When a four-acre lot on the outskirts of the village came up for sale in 2020—offering privacy, thanks to stands of old-grove trees; spectacular bay views; and a chance to create their “forever family home,” as Cunningham describes it—they nabbed it. “We wanted it in keeping with the rest of the homes but with a more contemporary, fresh feel than our first home,” says the wife. “We wanted it much more light and airy.” Plus, they had a dream team in the wings: Murray and Cunningham had collaborated on the gut renovation of the family’s Manhattan apartment a few years earlier.
The home Murray designed features a cedar-shingle exterior—already silvering from the sun and salt since its completion last year—and a massive fieldstone chimney, elements that hew to Vineyard tradition. But clean-lined, steel-framed windows and glass walls hint at the modernity within.
Throughout the 12,000-square-foot house, each room feels uniquely layered and warmly intimate. There is also plentiful light and enough white walls to display the couple’s ever-changing artworks, which have expanded exponentially since the wife, who once worked in finance, earned a master’s degree in contemporary art from Christie’s and joined the board of the Brooklyn Museum.
At the center of the family room, Cunningham—who worked with his firm’s design director, Alex Gaston, on the project—paired a custom-made pedestal table with chairs from the designer’s furniture collection, Marked. The chairs’ navy woven-leather backs and blue-and-white-patterned seat upholstery are a jaunty complement to the blues of a large-scale ocean photograph by Richard Misrach and a woven-textile work by Brent Wadden.
For the dining room, Cunningham grouped midcentury- modern-style wood chairs cushioned in a dark Edelman leather with an austere table by Sébastien Léon and Valérie Pasquiou that features a thin concrete top and trim, pipelike metal legs. Above, a Matt Gagnon Studio chandelier crafted with swirling ceramic loops appears to frolic from the ceiling like a cloud without interrupting the woodland view.
The all-season sunroom, meanwhile, is the heart and soul of the house. Wrapped with walls of sliding glass, a rift oak ceiling, and flooring of weathered Windsor limestone that extends to the patios for a continuous indoor-outdoor feel, the spacious room is furnished with a huge custom-made oak dining table, vintage armchairs, a deep-seated sofa of Cunningham’s design, and a rustic stump side table by Chris Lehrecke. Presiding over the versatile space are a whimsical Maren Kloppmann wall sculpture composed of ceramic pieces and an abstract canvas by Sam Moyer incorporating slices of stone. “It’s everybody’s favorite room; they spend the most time in there,” Cunningham says.
A tour de force floating staircase, fashioned from steel and wood, connects the home’s three floors, rising from a state-of-the-art wine room to the top floor’s primary bedroom suite—all pale hues and soft textures—and a loftlike TV room. Painted a vernal green, the space is one of many designed to encourage repose. A sofa upholstered with puffer-jacket-style channel tufting melds into a cozy daybed window seat offering an inviting perch above the leafy treetops just outside.
“It’s a glass house but not a glass house,” says Murray. “There’s a sense of intimacy as well as expansiveness. You feel protected.”
A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2024 Summer Issue under the headline “Island Breeze.” Subscribe to the magazine.
Designer Mark Cunningham and Architect John B. Murray Collaborate on a Martha’s Vineyard Retreat
