John DeFazio, AIA
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House on Mount Desert Island Over looking Compass Harbor, near Bar Harbor ME, this large house is intended to act as a"family seat" where scattered branches of family would come together during the summer months. It also designed to act as a bed and breakfast when not being used by the extended family. The site provides panoramic views of Frenchsman's Bay and glimpses of the Atlantic Ocean beyond. The house evokes the 19C shingle style architecture of Bruce Price and Calvin Stevens, while providing an open, modern, organic plan that is inspired by Czechoslovakian Cubism and German Expressionism of the Nineteen-Teens. These faceted "Expressionist" forms echo the natural stone indigenous to the island, as does the rake of the house's fragmented and extended gambrel roof and dormers. The overall massing of the house --- a windswept pile --- creates "a rock of a house", perched at the edge of the sea. A natural house -- generated by its use, its place and echoing nature itself-- and built in the nature of its materials, conventionally. |

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West Elevation |

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South Elevation |
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East Elevation |
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