The private beach is accessed via paths, which are both walkable and accessible via a golf cart.
The property is gated. Once through it, visitors meander along a lengthy driveway and pass a tennis court to reach the main building, which is actually two buildings—a guest house and a main house—separated by a reflecting pool filled with spent hydrothermal seawater.
The House
The main house is long and narrow, broken into two sections: a guest wing and an expansive, if relatively enclosed, owner’s suite.
The four-bedroom guest house has its own garage, and connects to the main entertaining areas and covered swimming pool via bridges over the reflecting pool, in addition to a more prosaic hallway.
“Guests can be completely independent,” Malak says. “They have their own entrance, so can come and go as they please.”
The owner’s suite is accessed via its garage or the formal entryway. Guests can pass over the pool and into the massive kitchen/dining room/living room area that overlooks the ocean. Malak can also bypass the entertaining section and go into his master suite, which has a walk-in-closet that’s larger than the actual bedroom.
At the far end of the guest area is a billiards room, bar, and media room.
In an unorthodox move, Malak approached the artist David Ladmore in 2013 to decorate the house. “When I met the artist, I said, ‘How many works do you have available in your studio, at your gallery?’ ” Malak recalls. “He said, ‘About 100,’ and I said, ‘Well, guess what? I’m buying it all.’” He did. The works are lightly abstracted landscapes, along with a few figure studies, rendered in either watercolor or oil paint.
Malak then hired art installers, who spent three weeks hanging the art in the house. “He made a website about it,” Malak says of Ladmore, and called it the Swanwick Collection.” (The house is located on Swanwick Road.) The art could be included in the sale “if someone appreciates them,” Malak says. “They’re magnificent artworks.”
Arguably, the most novel component of the house lies below the living area. A boathouse, accessed via an interior stairway, is connected to the ocean via a tramway. “You press a button: It takes the boat up the tramway into the house,” Malak explains. “You press another: It sends it out into the ocean.” A James Bond-style escape pod immediately springs to mind. Still, at least in theory, the house is for retreating to, rather than escaping from.