There have been many influences for us over the years but the defining factor in our firm s work is that we practice architecture in Maine, amidst extraordinary and ordinary beauty. Although it has become something of a cliche for architects to say they pay close attention to a building s site and surroundings, for Elliott + Elliott Architecture, residing, working, and building along Maine s rugged coast has translated not only into refreshing architectural forms whose roots in tradition are clear, but also into collaborative processes with local builders and artisans, in the spirit of the shipbuilders and craftsmen of the state s history. Houses of Maine offers an in-depth look at six houses, from the celebrated House on Casco Bay (a modern update to a nineteenth-century Cape Cod) to Pond House (a Mount Desert Island summer cottage inspired by local fishing shacks). It s proof that in the right hands, the rough-around-the-edges individualism and often harsh natural environment for which this coast is known allow for a balanced, serene, and vernacular architecture whose links with the past create nothing less than a confidently optimistic preview of the region s architectural future.