A Shimmer of Glass
Architect Carol Wilson's designs are modern, elegant, and -- in the case of one Portland house -- incredibly controversial.
By Edgar Allen Beem, photography by Brian Vanden Brink, portrait by Carl D. Walsh
When Erik and Caitlin Mushial first proposed building a glass and steel house in a hodgepodge Portland neighborhood of apartments and tenements overlooking the Casco Bay Bridge, city planners gave them the thumbs down. The proposed design, they said, was too radically different from its nineteenth-century surroundings to comply with city guidelines for development.Almost immediately several local architects rose to defend the Mushials' plan. "This is the best architect the state has seen in a generation," architect Scott Simons told the Portland Planning Board.
