Christ Church was one of four dozen iconic churches erected by Christopher Wren in the City of London after 1666, when the Great Fire annihilated much of the famous Square Mile—a world center, then and now, for trading and banking.

Stephen Kieran, FAIA, likens his family’s new weekend house on Taylors Island in Maryland to a duck blind, one of those three-sided shelters that hunters build to make themselves disappear in the woods or a marsh.

The client, a New York–based developer with a young family, had a clear goal: a weekend house “as exciting as anything by Neutra and Schindler.”