Set on a private beach in Darien, Connecticut, its owner says the proportions add beauty and light.
(Bloomberg) — In the mid 1990s, Lennart Mengwall had a problem: Specifically, his four children were getting older, and he wanted them to stick around. “How do I keep my family together?” asked Mengwall, the co-chief executive officer of Primix Solutions, an internet services firm. “The one thing I thought was: Build a big house.”
He purchased a 2.8-acre plot of land on Butler’s Island in Darien, Connecticut. There was already a 1950s-era house on the property which, as promised, Mengwall dramatically refashioned, creating a roughly 8,500-square-foot house with seven bedrooms and eight full baths.
To his delight, the scheme went off without a hitch. “All the kids live in Darien, so the effect I wanted–for the house to keep the family close–worked very well,” he says. “Four kids, 11 grandchildren, all in Darien.” With his work complete, Mengwall has put the house on the market, listing it for $10.99 million with Becky Munro and Rob Johnson of Brown Harris Stevens.
Designing the House
Mengwall moved from Sweden to Connecticut in the 1980s while he worked for IBM (“IBM Sweden sent me to the US to figure out what the company was doing with the PC,” he explains, “so I had carte blanche to go into any area of the company”) and has lived in the state ever since. “This is such a beautiful part of the world,” he says. “I can’t imagine anything better. You have the seasons, you have the water, so I put my roots here.”
After quitting IBM and branching out on his own, Mengwall found financial success, and by the late 1990s, had the means to create a family home for the ages. “If you come from a small country to a huge country,” he explains, “the fear is you get spread out and lose your family. So I tried to find a good spot.”
The one he chose is built on top of a solid granite outcrop, with a private beach. The house faces south and west, “and that means that you have sun reflecting onto the water in the afternoon, and the light bounces into the house at an angle,” he says.
The house is close to the water — just 45 feet from the shore — Mengwall estimates. Working with an architect, they spent six months on the house’s renovation plans. “We wanted to take advantage of the view of course,” he says, “but also to take advantage of the sun, to consider the wind and the weather.” Also, he adds, “I wanted to have a nice office, because I worked from home. I was an early proponent of a lifestyle that’s more common now.”
Finally, he decided to incorporate the Fibonacci sequence, a mathematical concept akin to the Golden Ratio, where each proportion is the sum of the two that preceded it. Mengwall organized some of the windows according to the sequence, as well as some of the stonework and doors. “When you see it, you wonder why it’s beautiful,” he says. “And it’s beautiful because of the Fibonacci sequence. You can say it’s a lot of BS, but that’s not true.”
Distinct Touches
The house is spread across three main floors. Visitors enter into the middle level, which contains a primary suite on one side, with a large eat-in kitchen and family room on the other. In the middle there’s a large living room, library and dining room. (Another three en-suite bedrooms are also dotted throughout that floor.) A large balcony runs along the water-side of the building. The lower level, which opens onto the lawn, has another bedroom, a gym, a huge family room and a large office. The top floor has another two bedrooms, a media room and a billiards room.
Mengwall made sure to incorporate a variety of wood types into the home’s design. “I used wood as much as possible, and stone as much as possible,” he says, like white maple on the floors. “If it’s not treated with a stain, it will, after some time, look like champagne is spilled all over the floor in a yellow, beautiful color,” he says. “So throughout the house there’s champagne-colored maple.” He also has tiger maple in his office, and red and white oak are spread throughout the house.
Outside, the property has been carefully landscaped. There are mature trees, a pool, a koi pond built into the granite, and a lawn that extends down to the private beach.
Mengwall, who says he is now in his 80s, anticipates missing the house when he finally moves. “I will miss it quite a bit,” he admits. “But I’ve come to an age where you have to think about the future, you can’t just go on.” And so he’s decided it’s time to leave. “Not leave the area,” he clarifies. “But leave the house.”
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