Joan Lasky Saba and Mark Saba, Pittsburgh natives who raised their family in Connecticut, began renting homes in Maine for stretches of time when their son decided to attend Bowdoin College. But the state’s many charms soon lured them in, convincing them to settle here permanently. “I found this 800-square-foot, two-bedroom cottage on the internet,” Joan recalls. “The price was slashed, and I wondered why.”

Curious, she flew up to Maine and drove to West Bath. From the moment she entered the 4.3-acre
property abutting Winnegance Bay, she recalls, “I felt it was something magical.” She was so moved, adds Mark, “When the realtor told the owner Joan had gotten teary-eyed, the owner said, ‘I want them to have it.’”

The house itself, however, was not going to be sufficient to accommodate their retirement plans. Mark had been a medical illustrator and graphic designer for Yale University, but he wanted to pursue his love of painting, poetry, and fiction writing full-time, which required a studio. Joan, though still a partner at an architectural firm specializing in hospitals and academic medical centers, was also a painter in search of her own studio space. “I knew there was no way I’d have the time to design a home,” she says. So she hired David Matero Architecture, whose work she had found in design magazines.

Matero and Eric Smith of Oceanside Builders quickly realized a few possible reasons the property’s price had been reduced. “It was on a steep slope,” explains Matero. “There was about a 50- or 60-foot drop to the house, then another 30-foot drop to the water.” Additionally, there were building restrictions associated with waterfront setbacks and septic systems. “There was not a lot of buildable land.”

Furthermore, adds Smith, “We knew we were going to hit rock at some point, and we did, but only on one part of the house and not the other. I wasn’t going to build one half of the house on fill and the other on ledge.” After consultations with an engineer, Smith solved the issue by hammering back the ledge and bringing in “proper backfill so that the house would be evenly distributed on the base.”

As for the paucity of buildable land, Matero designed a contemporary crescent-shaped structure. “The landscape really formed this house,” he observes. “The crescent opens up corners on the water-facing side of the house but embraces the topography in the front. The hillside goes way up on the right, so the tall part of the house relates well to its height.” His clients also didn’t want their home to stand out like a sore thumb from the water, so Matero “broke up the massing,” which turned out to have an added advantage: the collection of small roofs drain water more effectively than one big roof would have. That water now streams down through a valley created by the varying rooflines and cascades dramatically like a waterfall outside the main living space. However, Smith explains, to help prevent pooling and foundation-damaging backwash, “We created a dry riverbed look over a storm drain that carries it away from the building.”

Inside, the multiple rooflines create a dynamic play of pine-clad angles overhead but also slope toward the view, training the focus on the waterfront. To ensure a contemporary sensibility that is nevertheless informed by the locality’s sense of place, “We kept rusticity to a minimum without ignoring the surroundings,” says Matero. For instance, Douglas fir paneling enveloping the primary
bedroom is a nod to camp style, as is the stone fireplace, except here the stone is cut into blocks rather than left natural, thus telegraphing a cleaner profile. The warmth of wood and its relation to the forested site continues onto the floors, which are oak throughout.

As an architect with a substantial understanding of design, Joan proved an ideal collaborator with Jeanne Handy of Jeanne Handy Designs on interior finishes and furnishings. “We talked about bringing the outside in with the palette and details like wallpaper and hardware,” remembers Handy. “But the idea for me is always to be less obvious—not to look like the outdoors, but to evoke the feeling the outdoors brings, the serenity the site already has.” The point was to “create ‘aaah’ moments where your shoulders drop a little.”

Says Handy, “It’s always fun for me to work with clients who are artistic. It facilitates a group process rather than having me dictate a style. The Sabas have an excellent eye and are open to things that are different.” They were also quick studies, apparently. “Jeanne and I selected all the light fixtures in 90 minutes,” notes Joan.

Green (primarily Sherwin-Williams Sea Salt in a matte finish) and blue were obvious choices for the color palette, but they are also subtle and susceptible to changes in light throughout the day. Wallpapers bring in elements of surprising pattern and color, such as stylized stripes on the wall behind a bed in a guest room, and the midnight blue paper with a gold pattern of the cosmos in a hidden reading nook tucked behind the fireplace.

The reading nook, one of several unusual features of the home, was Joan’s idea and is sure to be a highly coveted sleeping accommodation for grandchildren. Another of Joan’s unique, innovative details is a 38-by 38-inch “puzzle drawer” that pulls out of the kitchen island. Rather than have a jigsaw puzzle occupying a surface when no one is working on it, she explains, “you can just drop it into the drawer.”

Other elements that differentiate the house from a standard shingle-clad camp are architectural. Matero swathed the entry volume’s exterior with dark bronze corrugated metal. “We didn’t have to use metal,” he admits, but doing so “highlights the entrance and the staircase just inside.” There’s a considerable amount of shadow play activated by the rooflines, but also by brise-soleils, screen panels that protrude horizontally from the tops of windows, breaking up the sunlight both on the exterior and inside the house as it filters through them.

One of Joan’s favorite novelties is a clerestory window in her studio set into the wall within a chamfered edge. “I called David and said, ‘Wait a minute. This reminds me of the windows in Ronchamp’”—better known as Chapelle Notre-Dame du Haut, Le Corbusier’s famous structure in
Ronchamp in northeast France. Indeed, her hunch about this architectural reference was accurate, he assured her.

Outside, Jorgensen Landscaping created mulched paths and stone steps to convey the Sabas, their family, and guests through the woods and down to the water, all bordered by native plantings that simply bring a bit more order to the wildness of the site.

As Handy mentioned, the cumulative result of architecture, interiors, and landscaping leans heavily into the serenity that the outdoors brings. For homeowners preoccupied with creative endeavors, this turns out to be quite generative. “We love the silence here,” says Mark, noting that they hid the television out of sight purposely, which helps them concentrate on their respective art forms. “Growing up in Pittsburgh,” he explains, “I was really familiar with Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.
This is not that, of course, but I like the feeling of being so tied to nature. The site is conducive to that.”