A couple hours drive from Washington, D.C., Hooper’s Island, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore on the Chesapeake Bay, seems to exist in a time warp. One of the state’s oldest settled areas, the island was originally agrarian. Today, many of the 400-odd residents of the sleepy community—with simple, saltbox houses dotting the flat, waterfront expanses—are watermen: crabbers, oyster tongers, and seafood packers. For some 300 years, it is said, the population could be traced to 10 families. So when a Modernist, metal-clad weekend compound designed by Alexandria, Virginia-based architect David Jameson, FAIA, started to rise along its shores, one can only imagine the chattering rattling the walls of The Island Pride, the local gas station-cum-hardware store and grocery-cum-restaurant.

Some years earlier, a professional from D.C. and his partner had purchased the isolated, 6-acre property and its white clapboard cottage, situated alongside the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, between a salt meadow marsh, the Honga River, and a pine forest. Not long afterward, however, in 2003, Hurricane Isabel destroyed the cottage. Rather than trying to reconstruct the past, the owners saw this wiping-clean of the slate as an opportunity to build something that would connect them to the awe-inspiring environment. “This house is about the land, the sea, the sky, and bringing that all together,” says Jameson. “The idea is to get you out of the house, to be a part of the landscape.” Beyond this, the clients modestly requested that the house have places to sleep, cook, and sit.