Ever Wondered What an Architect’s Sketchbook Looks Like? We Got a Peek Inside

Stephen Alesch is never without a sketchbook. He hand-drafts all of the plans for Roman and Williams’s building projects, as well as their furniture and lighting designs. In CULTURED‘s latest Hamptons issue, Alesch shares his drawings of the Sea Ranch orchard, a tree-filled garden abutting the Montauk home he shares with his wife and business partner Robin Standefer. They affectionately call their orchard “the fruit loop.” Its rings of peach, plum, apple, and pear trees echo the sacred geometry of the classical labyrinth garden, which featured a resplendent assemblage of fruit trees with hyssop, artichokes, radicchio, artemisia, and other medicinal herbs.

Alesch also presents a 21st-century interpretation of a historic botanical drawing that diagrams two types of apples. The forbidden fruit, cultivated on Long Island since the 17th century, has long captivated the couple’s imaginations—in art and in food. The variation on tarte tatin on the menu of La Mercerie, the French restaurant they founded at the heart of SoHo’s RW Guild, is just one of their tributes to the fruit’s timeless tang.

“The layout [of our Hamptons orchard] was inspired by traditional labyrinth gardens; classical places like the Alhambra in Granada, Spain; and the culinary gardens of Versailles—albeit a rougher, wilder seaside interpretation.”

“The formal garden, for us, serves as a counterbalance to the rambling, mostly native meadows and thickets in the area.”

“Day after day, long into late August, we cruise along the ‘fruit loop,’ collecting armfuls of things to make into other things—completing the circle.”