Our experience of a place unfolds through a sequence of moments. We see the light on the water, hear the leaves rustle dryly on the trees, and smell the scent of salt on the air. We approach a place through our senses, and as I pull into the driveway of this classic contemporary Freeport home, designed by architect Gary Lowe of Lowe Associates—Architects in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, and built by John Rousseau of Rousseau Builders in Pownal, I enter into a purposefully designed experience, one that was thoughtfully planned to take full advantage of the natural beauty of the Maine coastline.

The land had been in the family for a century, but it still stood empty, save for the tall cedars and sticky pines rising from the spongy carpet of moss that blanketed the ground. “I used to look across the bay from my parents’ house and see these trees,” the homeowner remembers. “I wondered, ‘What’s over there?’ And my dad would say, ‘Someday, that might be where you live.’” At the time, the homeowner says, she couldn’t imagine “living in those scary woods.” There weren’t any houses on that coastal stretch; there wasn’t even a road that ran down from the main byways of Harpswell to this particular piece of land. “But my dad had a dream,” she says. “And now we’re here.”