November 2012

I don’t know this house, but I know this house.

We love bringing you “extraordinary perspective” at Portland Magazine. Sometimes, it catches us by surprise, too.

I was touring our House of the Month on the windswept edge of Bald Head Cliff when I felt it, like hearing a faraway melody or remembering something I’d never seen before.

But I had seen this house before–a stunning, Zen-like modern structure–in Japan. At least its soul mate. In unconscious parallel with our Rocky House in Maine by Lisa DeStefano Architects (see our cover story, complete with cornerless window wall, p. 82), Sou Fujimoto Architects has created “A weekend house for a couple located on a rocky coast two hours drive from Tokyo…with approaches sloping down to the water. The characteristic of its plan, imagined like the branches of a tree, is a continuous one room.” There’s a somewhere and a somewhen else to everything, a melodious variation on The Butterfly Effect. When you close your eyes, the continuous rooms touch. One moment you’re in Cape Neddick, another you’re in Japan, an astral harmony.