Cheryl Weber is a writer based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Photographer Dan Forer is based in Miami.

The house owned by Steven and Vibha Hutchins on St. Croix, the largest of the U.S. Virgin Islands, is a contemplative but social place. Getting up in the morning, they can wander from the bedroom wing through an open-air atrium to the kitchen. They might brew a cup of coffee and settle over papers in the breakfast room, taking in the sounds of birdsong and the lapping surf of the Caribbean. Evenings are likely to find the couple entertaining friends on the lattice-topped patio, enjoying the sight of an old-time Danish sugar mill next door. From the patio they can climb a sculptural stair to the roof deck, which gazes across the water to the lights of Christiansted. Like all good coastal homes, this one has a well-developed sense of prospect and refuge, with rooms that feel cozy and protected, yet like they are part of their natural surroundings.

The flat concrete roof of the island home owned and designed by Steven and Vibha Hutchins is built to resist fires and wind shear, and provide decks for viewing the nearby Caribbean.

“I’m a contextual architect; the locale and site have a formative influence on the design,” says architect Steven Hutchins who designed the home with his Indian-born wife Vibha, an interior designer. They met at the Pratt Institute in New York, married in 1986, and set up separate practices in both Jacksonville, Florida, and Christiansted, St. Croix, where Steven grew up and worked in the family construction business. In addition to hotels, condominiums and commercial buildings, his architecture firm specializes in high-end custom waterfront homes, like their Jacksonville house on the St. Johns River. “We travel back and forth constantly,” Steven says.

Coffee and end tables are from Bali and the decorative panel above the sofa is from a house on the island of Madura in Indonesia.

The pair has teamed up on countless building projects, and this one, too, is a fusion of their ideas. Inside the spare concrete walls are rooms filled with cotton-slip-covered furniture, exotic West Indian and Indonesian artifacts and soft colors. As is often true of spouses who are design professionals, they have developed complementary styles over the years. While they share a love of contextual modernism, Vibha’s warm, earthy interiors help to modulate the hard edges of Steven’s architecture. “Her approach will tend to be a bit more traditional to tone down the high note that the architecture gives her,” Steven says. “Vibha’s skill is in taking a contemporary design and making it livable.”

The couple agreed on three design goals for their one-acre retreat. One was to orient the house to views of the sugar mill and the ocean. The second was to celebrate island life with living areas that are open to the tropical climate. “The idea was to open it up and allow for living outdoors while under a roof,” Steven says. “You can hear the ocean from just about every room.” They also wanted to use a local material—concrete—as a sculptural medium to create a contemporary building.

Croix hangs above the sideboard.

The house’s layout consists of four pods radiating from a central atrium, which is under roof but open to the outdoors. The south-facing front incorporates a two-story tower with a laundry below and an exercise room above, a subtle nod to the sugar-mill chimney across the way. Opposite is the kitchen and breakfast pod, its form mimicking the ruins of the squat mill. Behind it lie a living room and a formal dining room. Both spaces spill onto an elliptical patio that spans the back of the house, joining up with a fourth pod containing three bedrooms. There, stairs ascend to a deck on the master-suite roof, where the Hutchinses like to entertain. “We mounted a flood light on the side of the house to light up the old sugar plantation ruins,” Steven says. “They become a conversation piece from the living spaces.” In this easy-living house, even buzzing insects are rendered harmless, thanks to the trade winds continually blowing through.

While the house wholeheartedly embraces nature, it does not pretend to be part of it—not when hurricane-force winds whip through on a regular basis and earthquakes are a constant threat. From the inside, at least, the house’s laid-back vibe belies its fortress-like construction. The flat concrete roof resists fires and wind shear, and, during hurricanes, window shutters can be quickly attached to sleeves embedded in the walls. The structure benefited from the expertise of local tradesmen, who knew how to form concrete and tie reinforcing steel. Other materials and elements were chosen to withstand the harsh salt air. “You have to spec corrosion-resistant hardware, water pumps, and even appliances, especially when a home is as open as ours is,” Steven says.

Outdoor dining and lounging areas provide a view of the sugar mill and access to the curved stair leading to the roof deck.

 For the interior, Vibha wanted a natural, earthy feel and casual, yet elegant pieces with lots of texture. In contrast to the bright colors typically associated with tropical dwellings, she chose muted finishes—soft whites for the walls and olive-green floor tiles. “The tile brings in elements of the grass,” she says. “It’s almost a translation of what you see outside.”

Bright colors fade out in the strong sunlight, she says, and the eclectic furnishings reflect her preference for the timeless patina of old wood: bamboo patio furniture from the Dominican Republic, wood-and-leather living room chairs from the Philippines and dining chairs from Mexico. Many pieces are handcrafted antiques picked up at the annual Whim Museum auction on St. Croix or on frequent trips to the Indonesian islands. “In the 17th and 18th centuries there was a strong cabinet-making tradition locally,” says Vibha, who before setting up her own practice worked for several high-profile Manhattan firms, including Edward Durell Stone and Dorothy Draper & Company. “I’ve used quite a few original pieces in a contemporary way.” In the breakfast room, a West Indian pie safe stows table linens, and a cupping table, once used to hold cups and saucers, anchors a hallway. “What’s delightful about a lot of these island pieces is that there’s a certain simplicity to them but the lines are very beautiful,” she says. “Everything has a handmade quality, and every year adds to its luster.”

While the house itself took less than a year to construct, the interior evolved over four years. “I don’t like things to look forced on these coastal homes,” Vibha says. “It tells you what it wants; you just have to give it a little bit of time.”