There are times when a site is so perfect, so breathtaking, there is nothing for an architect to do but surrender to it. Such was the fortunate predicament Boston-based Peter Rose + Partners faced when asked to design a vacation house for a young family on Chappaquiddick, an island off the Massachusetts coast. Located on a bluff, the western edge of the property faces the Atlantic while the east end looks out toward the protected Cape Pogue Bay. Between those radically different sandy borders sit four acres of thick forest.

Rose had designed two other houses on Martha's Vineyard—to which Chappaquiddick is connected—that caught the owners' attention. “His houses fit perfectly into the landscape, but there is a complexity to them,” the wife explains. “They are modern, but with a warmth and a humble quality.”