The Calming Effect -- Two Vacation Homes On Decatur Island Serve Up Tranquility

DECATUR ISLAND IS A TRANQUIL preserve east of Lopez Island in the San Juans. Nine years ago, a Seattle developer turned a 485-acre parcel in the northwest corner of the island into a private development, establishing 77 circular homesites and preserving the rest in common for the enjoyment of the residents.

Decatur Northwest, as the development is known, has turned out to be a showcase for some of the finest vacation homes in the Pacific Northwest. Many of the region's top architects have been asked to design houses for this area.

Thanks to stringent design guidelines, most of the dwellings are moderately sized and modestly appointed, using materials and colors that are sympathetic to the bucolic surroundings and each other. Yet they still manage to exhibit some design derring-do.

Seattle architect Tom Bosworth recently made his own contribution to this distinguished collection by designing a 1,700-square-foot house for a pair of Seattle physicians with three small children. The wide, shallow home rests on a steep slope, with a forested hill behind it and Brigantine Bay visible through the trees in front.

"We told Tom we wanted a house that invited us outdoors," says the wife. In addition, the couple requested a home that would foster a sense of togetherness, but still provide the husband and wife with some privacy from the children.

To balance these different needs, Bosworth designed a central liv-ing/eating structure flanked by a bedroom wing on one side and guest quarters on the other. Although a common roofline links all three, the passageways between them are open, forcing the family to step outside as they pass from one to the other.

While some might question the practicality of such an arrangement, the wife says the compulsory exposure to the elements really puts the family in touch with the natural world around them. French doors facilitate the flow to the surrounding decks, while tall, narrow windows frame the views in every direction. Screened transoms encourage cross-ventilation without obstructing the scenery.

"You feel like you're in a gossamer house," observes the wife. "The outdoors is just everywhere."

Bosworth believes that a successful vacation home should incorporate natural materials in an unpretentious way.

In the Decatur house, he covered the walls with hemlock paneling painted a crisp white, and wrapped doors and windows with vertical-grain fir. He crowned the central living area with a pair of light troughs and anchored one end of the room with a freestanding kitchen. The kitchen's back wall conceals a hallway lined with handy storage pegs and cupboards, to keep gear organized and out of sight.

A woodstove rests on a tiled platform at the other end of the room. Cushions to either side double as beds for overflow guests. The walls between the adjacent windows are fitted with bookcases, adding to the structure's sense of warmth and solidity.

The bedroom wing resembles a bunkhouse, with two small bedrooms for the children and a larger bedroom for their parents. All three rooms share a common hallway lined with storage closets. When the children are older, the parents will move into the guest quarters on the opposite end of the house, assuring privacy for all parties.

Because low maintenance was crucial for these busy owners, interior designer Anne Fisher suggested rugged Craftsman-style furnishings upholstered in child-resistant shades of burgundy and hunter green. The colors are especially welcoming in the winter, when days are shorter and the focus turns inward, toward hearth and family.

IT'S A BRACING 20-minute stroll from Bosworth's creation to the cabin shared by Ken and Judy Ryan, and Mac and Cynthia Noyes. (No private vehicles are allowed in Decatur Northwest, so residents must go everywhere on foot.) Tall but compact, with charcoal-green siding and a broad-brimmed roof supported by oversized struts, the cabin looks a little like a forest ranger's lookout. Indeed, architects Bob Hull and Craig Curtis of Seattle's Miller/Hull Partnership used that indigenous building form as an inspiration, borrowing the wraparound windows and exaggerated eaves to create a hillside perch that's both cozily woodsy and airily open.

Completed three years ago at a cost of just $109,000, the 840-square-foot cabin is a study in economy. The top floor features a single 13-by-30-foot space containing the living room, dining area and kitchen. The tongue-in-groove plank floors double as the ceiling for the floor below. A small, free-standing woodstove provides most of the heat, while a recirculating fan helps channel that warmth into the rooms below.

Built-in banquettes with storage compartments underneath conserve precious floor space. Instead of hanging cupboards over the kitchen counter and interrupting the view, the architects placed open shelves directly over the windows, preserving the vista while ensuring a measure of privacy from the house next door. The kitchen counter is higher than the window sill behind it, producing a handy niche for hiding small appliances.

"There's nothing terribly fancy about this," says Cynthia Noyes, a psychology student. "The beauty here is from the outside."

From its cliff-top aerie, the cabin commands a sweeping view of Lopez Sound. The scenery wraps around you on three sides, giving the interior the seemingly limitless sweep of an airplane cockpit. Eagles coast by on unseen currents, while sailboats ply the waters below.

By contrast, the bottom floor is more enclosed, with a bedroom for each couple and a family room and bath in between. Hull and Curtis designed the bedrooms as tightly as a ship's cabin, allowing just enough room for the bed, a closet and windows that permit the homeowners to savor the sounds of the surf while they sleep.

The Ryans and Noyeses had never met before the project began. The Ryans live in Tucson and were interested in the same building site as the Noyeses, so an enterprising sales agent put them together.

"Financially, it didn't make a lot of sense for us to go it alone, because we couldn't get up here all the time," explains Cynthia. The two couples collaborated on the project long distance, with the wives furnishing the completed house during a daylong shopping spree. Their paths have rarely crossed since. Each family has the house for two weeks before turning it over to the other family.

For Cynthia, the cabin's simplicity is its biggest asset.

"I'm pared down to the basics," she says. "I don't have a phone or TV, and the radio reception is awful. It forces me to calm down: to listen to the water and the birds and just be right here instead of planning the future or thinking about the past. It just brings me to the here and now and that's worth its weight in gold."

Seattle writer Fred Albert reports regularly on home design for Pacific, and is co-author of "American Design: The Northwest," published by Bantam. Greg Gilbert is a Seattle Times staff photographer.