The owners report that not a day goes by that someone doesn’t stop to gawk about how well their house fits in, or remind them of their family cottage, a great compliment to our design. This is especially wonderful considering that it contains 4 stories of living space including a finished basement, has an efficient electric heat pump system for heating and cooling, is fully insulated to modern codes, meets all of the city’s stormwater requirements to keep Willard Beach clean, didn’t block neighbor’s views, contains a glass filled corner that feels like a solarium inside, and greets the street with a porch where interaction among neighbors is the norm.
Field-Houser Residence
Contextual DesignNew Construction
A year-round home in Willard Beach, Barba + Wheelock designed this new 3-bedroom home to fit snugly on the postage stamp lot. Rather than compete with the newer awkward structures that were morphing all around it, the form and materials intentionally harkened back to the earlier archetypal coastal cottages with a contextual design sensibility that ironically, tries to re-establish the pattern that was once prevalent in the neighborhood and throughout coastal Maine.