Wanting a whole new house but loath to leave their pastoral, coastal setting, a Maine family razes one abode and builds a contemporary country home in its place. By Anna Kasabian Photographs by Wayne Fuji’i

Even after years of routine renovations and repairs to their 19th-century Cape Cod-style home on Maine’s Casco Bay, the desire for a newer, more contemporary home became too much for one family to deny. But a move would mean leaving their beloved bucolic setting behind, a reality they weren’t ready to face. They didn’t want to leave this wonderful spot, with its four seasons of magical country views, and they didn’t want to completely turn their back on the home’s 100-year history. After all, this is New England, and those special architectural details, like a high-pitched roof, attached barn, and wood shingles, were part of the visual stew that was both familiar and comforting.

So the challenge was this: How do you marry the new lifestyle with the old? How do you hold onto old details and introduce a new look that distinguishes a new lifestyle? Then there were the old perennial gardens that surrounded the house—gardens that gave color, texture, and a few pretty views from inside the old Cape. The gardens just had to stay. But how?

Enter award-winning architecture firm Elliott & Elliott of Blue Hill, Maine, and Christine Cantwell, from The Industrial Design Studio of Portland. They would be the perfect team.

After a few meetings, it became apparent that this time, there would be no renovating.  The old Cape would come down, a new build taking its place. As for the traditional details the family lived with for so long, the design team would ensure they be recalled and restated in the new structure.

As demolition and then construction ensued, the gardens were kept under the watchful eye of David Emery, who has tended them for 20 years. Portions of the garden were dismantled, dug up, and moved aside—a precious puzzle of flowers, bushes, and hedges that was eventually replanted around the new home. The same held true for the stone wall: parts were moved and rebuilt and, where necessary, new segments were incorporated. Today, the meadow is the same as always; the view to Casco Bay is as mesmerizing and blue as ever, and a new family home that comprises a series of wooden clapboard boxes and glass boxes is a light-filled, modernist toast to a new lifestyle.

“The original house was a 19th-century home, and it was the scale of the house and the history that needed to be reflected in the new home,” explains Corey Papadopoli, project architect. “As you can tell, there is a love of the traditional, but as their life evolved, they turned to the clean, crisp, minimalist space…they really wanted to look back and forward here.”

Papadopoli notes that in the planning stages, the architects and designers reflected upon the Cape’s size and proportions and were successful at developing a direct architectural reference to this and the barns that so often attached to a main house in rural Maine. “The downside of the old house was that it didn’t engage [the family] in any way; it didn’t open up to them,” he says. Now, the new home embraces the natural light and the views while maintaining the integrity and spirit of what once stood here.

Matt Elliott, principal of Elliott & Elliott Architecture, notes that while the original gardens were quite beautiful, one had to be outside to fully enjoy them. After all, a Cape is not about expansive windows, but there was a wonderful opportunity here to take full advantage of the views this mature garden offered with the concept of the new space.

The main level of the home recalls architectural details of a barn complete with wooden floors, which then dovetail seamlessly with the glass rooms and stone floors. The rooms gently cascade down to the garden-level entry, then to the kitchen, living room, dining room, and sitting room area, and down again to the master bedroom. “This descending keeps you in touch with the gardens,” Elliott explains.

Hardware and fixtures are a blend of contemporary and traditional, depending on the section where they are located, but the overall visual theme here is simplicity and clean lines. A perfect example is the gas fireplace with recessed burners; flames emerge from the floor in a modernist sculpture that recalls the old hearth and fireplace. “I have always felt the best definition of a house is that one of its main functions is as a light catcher,” says designer Christine Cantwell.

With the glass-walled rooms, striking glass staircase, skylights, and windows that sequin high-walled rooms, this home is a perfect light catcher. Cantwell is quick to point out that the final design came with meticulous planning.

“We built three-dimensional models, and we worked with everything we did at the scale of the human body. We got to understand the space; [we saw] how it looks and feels and studied the quality of light at all seasons and anticipated how to work with it,” Cantwell says. Likewise, the decision to have furnishings that were more sculptural in form than simply square and hard-edged was an end product of the process.

The rich gumdrop colors of the Italian-made furniture demarcate the social zones. They are pleasing waves of color that remind of us, depending on the season, of wind-tossed fall leaves or the punches of color that emerge from the surrounding garden’s summer blooms. These zones are planted on the wood floors, some with area rugs, with furnishings either of wool or leather.

Kitchen cabinets by Boffi are acrylic, smooth, and subdued to re-emphasize the minimalist, modern viewpoint. They sit quietly in the background, as do the lighting and other functional details found in the bathrooms, bedrooms, and halls.

Depending on the light, there can be a wonderful play of shadows or sunlight that can change in a flash at dawn or dusk or with a swift wash of clouds that crosses the sky.

“Someone asked me if there was going to be art on the walls, or is the garden the art? The garden is very interactive with the house…we wanted this, the interior, to have a calmness so the interactivity would be subtle and sophisticated, no matter what the season,” Cantwell says.