Hutker Architects continues the legacy of New England homes in their latest book.

This summer, Hutker Architects dropped their third book, New England Coastal: Homes That Tell a Story. The second volume in a series built around what partner Phil Regan calls “sense of place,” the gorgeous printing by Monacelli Press announces itself with confidence and weight, measuring 12” x 9½” x 1¼”, brimming with narrative expressed through photography and words. Featuring a baker’s dozen of Hutker’s residential projects, it’s a hefty collection that would look at home on one’s coffee table, and yet it’s a work of more substance than a typical “coffee table” book. Writer Kyle Hoepner, in conjunction with the Hutker team, delves into paradoxical or “Zen koan”—like questions such as “How do you make something that’s actually not what it appears to be, but do so in an authentic way?” and “How does a project undertaken for a client who, at the beginning, is dubious about the power of narrative to shape a home, end up becoming entirely about narrative?” Regarding the home of a client who is also an art collector, he muses, “What qualifies as art?” 

Regan, Managing Principal of Hutker’s Martha’s Vineyard office, prefers to avoid pigeon-holing the firm into any particular style and notes that their body of work extends beyond the borders of New England. For example, the home featured in the book’s fourth chapter, “Island Aerie,” sits, as Hoepner details, “some sixty feet above the waters of Maryland’s Magothy River as they...