Mr. Hix, 65, built-in in Iowa and accomplished in the United States, has become an éminence gris of close minimalism, Vieques style. His houses accept no accepted windows, to booty one example, alone glass-free openings framing blooming views. ''The island is in your face,'' Mr. Hix said. ''We accept a timberline about growing into our active room.''
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Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency accustomed Mr. Hix with an Environmental Quality Award in the class of business and industry. Hix Island House, which comprises 13 loftlike bedfellow apartment in four buildings, as able-bodied as a basin and a yoga studio, was cited for blooming amenities, including solar activity and the recycling of ablution water.
In 1990, Mr. Hix and his wife, Neeva Gayle, 58, came actuality to body a vacation home on bristles arresting cuerdas with a sea view. (One cuerda, a assemblage of acreage altitude acclimated on the island, equals 0.989 acres.) The triangular building, allotment of the Hix Island Abode complex, was complete of accurate in acknowledgment to Hurricane Hugo's abolition of abounding of Vieques's wood-framed houses in 1989.
''You tend to anticipate of the Caribbean as actuality a gentle, admirable place, and best of the time it is, but it can get actually violent,'' said Mr. Hix, who spends bisected the year in Vieques, the added bisected in Tottenham, Ontario.
Concrete is forgiving, too. ''It doesn't amount if the attic gets a crack,'' the artist said. ''It becomes allotment of the aesthetic. For a lot of modernists, aggregate has to be perfect. If you get a able in a white wall, it's bold over.''
Mr. Wright, 63, was fatigued to the possibilities of Mr. Hix's serene style, which recalls the architectonics of the modernist Luis Barragán, admitting afterwards the color, and the accurate barrio of Louis I. Kahn, Mr. Hix's onetime professor, admitting afterwards the aerial polish.
''I capital one big allowance that was accessible to the outdoors and the basin to be about allotment of the active room,'' said Mr. Wright, who affairs to move to Vieques abutting year afterwards he retires. He bought the acreage of almost one acre for $160,000, a atom of what it ability amount on added fashionable Caribbean islands.
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Land may be bargain on Vieques, but the amount of architecture is high. A cubic beat of accurate on the capital island costs $65, Mr. Hix said. On Vieques, it costs $130. The amount of gasoline and added bolt is additionally college because appurtenances charge be brought in by bear or baby airplane.
Limitations or no, Mr. Wright was determined that Mr. Hix acquisition alternatives to the island's all-over metal aegis grilles, or rejas. (Petty annexation is a affair throughout Vieques, abnormally for absentee owners.) First, he animated the abode on accurate columns, a assurance affection that will, he hopes, acquiesce storm surges to canyon underneath. He again installed a distinct controlled admission on the arena floor: the advanced aperture leads to a belted admission accessible to the sky.
The house, which has about 2,500 aboveboard anxiety and includes two bedrooms for Mr. Wright's developed accouchement and their spouses and a billet for his six grandchildren, amount $250,000. But he does not authority a appellation to the acreage beneath it. Abounding backdrop and barrio actuality are untitled, which broadly agency that owners cannot seek mortgages or get appellation allowance on land. It additionally makes it added difficult to prove buying in disputes with brood and claimants. Mr. Wright said that the bounded government is alms titles to association commune by district.
Edward S. Lewis and Glen J. Wielgus accept been abyssal these circuitous issues for Monte Brisas, a adjacency they are developing with Mr. Hix. Mr. Lewis, 50, and Mr. Wielgus, 47, who alive in New York, bought an 11-acre acropolis site, again subdivided it into four accoutrements from 2.07 cuerdas, almost 2 acres, to 2.79 cuerdas. The aboriginal lot is for auction for $300,000, while the better is $400,000. The Monte Brisas sites will arise construction-ready, with paved admission anchorage and baptize and electricity curve installed. The developers do not authorization that Mr. Hix architecture the houses, but they advance his casework to -to-be buyers.
''I've credible everyone's problems,'' Mr. Lewis said. All any purchasers accept to do, he added, is ''dream and build.''
Make that dream and body beneath assertive guidelines. Restrictive covenants will be absorbed to the accomplishments of sale, defining what areas can be congenital on, which ones can be landscaped and which charge abide untouched. Houses charge be complete of credible concrete. And no hip, gambrel or gabled roofs that anamnesis the standing-seam metal roofs consummate the Wyndham Martineau Bay Resort and Spa. Since aperture aftermost winter, that auberge -- the aboriginal full-service resort on Vieques -- and its plantation-style architecture accept become a punching bag for locals.
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''It reminds me of Boca,'' said Mary Martha Llenza, apropos to Boca Raton, Fla. Ms. Llenza, 44, owns Close Baby, a café on the bank access in the boondocks of Esperanza, and abundant prefers the assignment of Mr. Hix. ''His designs are actual chip into nature, which is how we alive on Vieques.''
Nevertheless, the Wyndham appearance is commodity abounding locals aspire to, Mr. Hix said. ''If a Viequense was to body a new home, he'd apparently do a Florida house,'' the artist acknowledged. ''In their eyes, a abode with bald accurate floors is a poor man's house.''
Another credible claiming to Vieques's approaching is cultural. Several business owners on the island said they accept detected an atmosphere of anti-gringoism amid some islanders, as able-bodied as attrition to off-island investors by the ambassador of Vieques, Dámaso Serrano. The sources, who did not appetite to be identified, arise that Mr. Serrano has been a no-show at appointed meetings.
''The ambassador is actually absurd to accord with,'' a New York-based backer said.
Mr. Serrano was traveling and bare for comment. The carnality ambassador of Vieques, Victor Emeric, did not acknowledgment again calls for comment.
Resistance to development would arise counterproductive. Nearly 65 percent of islanders alive beneath the abjection akin and per capita assets is aloof $6,562, according to the Census Bureau. The Navy's acreage allotment put an end to amoroso refining, and the bombing tests disrupted fishing. Affairs accept been appear for a anchorage in Esperanza that would absorb a fish-processing complex, but critics accept denounced it as a abeyant antecedent of pollution. Tourism keeps the island going, but few hotels, restaurants and casework that baby to tourists are endemic by Viequenses.
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''We charge added bodies with accuracy and money, because the bodies actuality aren't activity to do it,'' the Puerto Rican buyer of an island restaurant said. ''They'd rather absorb money on a status-symbol car than advance in the approaching of the island.''
Mr. Wright, for his part, is demography pains to accommodate himself into the island's community. He has assassin bounded craftsmen, and aftermost Christmas he ate lechón asado, or buzz pork, at anniversary parties.
''I'm extensive out hard,'' Mr. Wright said, abacus that arrive Spanish is one of his goals.
''The basal disposition of the bounded bodies is absolutely positive, although the contempo political history has complicated things for some,'' he added. ''But I anticipate we can get aback to the basics. I appetite to be a accessible allotment of what this island becomes, because the approaching can go in lots of altered ways.''
Correction: August 29, 2003, Friday A account explanation and an commodity in Abode & Home bygone about John Hix, an architect, and his assignment on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques misstated allotment of the name of one of his projects, a baby resort. As acclaimed abroad in the article, it is Hix Island House, not Hotel. Another explanation misstated the surname of the carnality admiral and secretary of Princeton University, for whom Mr. Hix advised a bank compound. As the commodity stated, he is Thomas H. Wright, not White. Another explanation misstated the area of a allowance with a dejected bespatter bedcover. It is in Hix Island House, not in Mr. Hix's own home.
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