A good friend is someone who can keep a secret. Brad Horn and Maria Berman, partners of Berman Horn Studio, discovered they had very good friends indeed when they chanced upon the island of Vinalhaven, Maine. At the time, they were searching for a suitable location to build a house that would serve as a year-round retreat and a second office for their Manhattan-based practice. “We thought nobody had heard about this place,” says Maria. “Turns out, lots of our friends were keeping it a secret.”

Their friends’ silence was understandable. The island is wooded and remote, blanketed in spruce trees and more than an hour by ferry from the mainland. Its natural splendor won the couple over, especially when they found a plot of craggy land overlooking a cove to build on.

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Along with their appreciation for the land came a fascination with New England’s Colonial architecture. “We loved how those old buildings have a severity but also a grace to them,” says Maria. The scheme they came up with joins a cape-style volume and a saltbox house with a screened-in porch that offers uninterrupted views of the sky and shore.

The structure for the screens was the couple’s own invention. They knew it needed to be lightweight, simple to install, and easy to maintain. They chose an aluminum frame, held together with a heavy-duty aerospace adhesive, and slide-in-slide-out screens—60 in all. The screens can be removed from the frame with an eight-foot ladder and about an hour of time, sparing them damage from Maine’s heavy snows come winter.

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The porch also serves as a bridge between the main house and the guest suite. Inside each domicile, the walls and low-mass radiant floors are a crisp white hue that allows the outdoors to remain the eye-catching element. The only interior interruptions to this “white box” look are the furnishings – a mix of midcentury modern pieces and 19th century American antiques – and the fireplace made of naked concrete masonry units, which adds texture to the room and serves as a call back to the cedar shingles on the home's facade and roof.

“We wanted the openness of a summer home with the performance of an all-seasons house,” says Maria. “We were our own guinea pigs with this system, but it’s been so successful that we’ve started incorporating it into projects for our clients.”

Project Credits:

Architecture: Berman Horn Studio/ @bermanhornstudio

Construction: PC Builders

Engineering: DR Pilla Consulting Engineers / @drpilla

Engineering: Martos Engineering / @martoseng

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