Cape and Islands

While most everyone else on the Cape is covering the wicker with sheets and lowering the blinds on yet another summer, one couple on Buzzard’s Bay is arranging wood for the fire and getting ready for their favorite season in their waterfront home.

This house wears no florals or chintz to recall hot July days as the shadows grow longer; rather, an all-season calm carries its owners into the winter months.

Opposites attract, which is why a visual artist and a businessman might find love, and why that same couple would split their time between a city nest swathed in jewel tones and an island home of cool coastal hues. After winter has finally left Boston, and spring’s fragile blooms have given way to fertile summer days, Margo Ouellette and her husband, Philip Evans, trade the skyline views of their high-rise Boston condo for the vibrant garden oasis of their Vineyard Haven home.

Grandparents everywhere know that, if you build it, they will come. That’s why these homeowners bought a stunning piece of waterfront land in Barnstable, tore down the inadequate house occupying the property and built an expansive, beautiful gathering place for their six children and ten grandchildren—a vacation home with room for all. As the couple searched for an architect, they noticed that the houses they most admired had one thing in common: they were all designed by Boston architect Tom Catalano. They looked no further.

A hawk banks left across the sky over a meadow of wildflowers, providing the only interruption to an endless view of waters bluer than the Caribbean. High above the Martha’s Vineyard shoreline sits a new glass, steel and cedar home that frames view upon view over treetops and salty ocean waves. From a fisherman’s perspective, the house would almost go unnoticed, tucked as it is into the landscape. Its impact on the hillside has been kept to a bare minimum both visually and environmentally.

Oh, the misery of showing up in formal attire to find the rest of the party is casual—or vice versa. The wrong type of house being built on a pretty street, though, seems far more painful. You can lose the tie or grab a pair of fancy heels, but what’s to be done about an awkward building?