When Pegge Wilson sits at her dining room table and looks out the floor-to-ceiling windows of her brand-spanking new home overlooking Glorietta Bay, she frequently feels like she's on a giant houseboat anchored in the marina.

"The way Marty designed this house with its sandblasted glass, it's like I'm looking out over a huge bow of a ship," she says. "I can't see the road below, nor the homes on each side; I'm just looking at the water and the boats in the bay and I get caught up in the feeling that we're on the water ourselves.

"And it's a really neat feeling."

Bob and Pegge Wilson's ultra-contemporary 4,500 square-foot glass-and-steel home was masterminded by Coronado architect Martin Crossman. It is one of several homes in the Village of Coronado to be featured on the May 22 Coronado School of the Arts (CoSA) home tour.

The Wilsons have owned properties along the Glorietta Bay Corridor since 1976. They purchased their current property in November 1989. The former house on the property was in very poor repair and, says Pegge, was "architecturally forgettable both inside and out." But the narrow and irregularly shaped lot was one of a select few single-family home properties that afforded views of the marina, bay and golf course.

While the Wilsons credit Crossman with design ingenuity, he is just as quick to return the compliment, noting that the couple was among the best prepared clients he has ever had. "Dream clients," he calls them.

"Bob and Pegge had a very good sense of what the house needed to be," he said. "They were very educated in terms of art and design and full of life. They had a folder filled with photos and magazine clippings of elements they liked from other homes that they thought might work for them.

"I didn't go to the initial meeting filled with the highest expectations," Crossman admits. "But when I left a couple of hours later, I was asking myself, 'Who do I have to kill to get this job?' "

The Wilsons gave him all the ingredients for a glorious meal; Crossman said he just combined

When construction began in 2001, steel beams shot up into the sky along with the eyebrows of a few Coronadans.

This was definitely not your grandfather's old abode.

Not Victorian, not Craftsman, not even Spanish Mediterranean.

Contemporary was coming to Coronado, resplendent in steel and concrete and glass of every hue, opacity and technique. Cutting edge stuff perched on a little rise, which in Coronado parlance was "hill country."

Modern is the toughest thing to build, Crossman contends. "The stuff that goes in the first day ends up showing in the final product," he said.

"We wanted to take full advantage of that view," said Pegge. "And we had to ask ourselves how we could best do it. Bob and I both love modern design and realized that it would satisfy our desire for loft living without having to move downtown. Marty came up with some wonderful design concepts."

"Both wanted a library, separate at-home offices and a kitchen where they could both cook. Pegge came up with the idea of a sloping wall while Bob tended more toward 'Zen modern' - very clean, not minimal, but austere; kind of antiseptic. Peggy wanted some warm touches. Bob was put in charge of the home theatre and wine cellar while Pegge took the lead on the great-room spaces. The dichotomy made it kind of nice," Crossman said.

"They wanted a double-height space; but you have to have at least one room overlook it so you can take advantage of it. Otherwise, it's just wasted space."

Crossman's design addressed that need: the second floor space features the master bedroom suite and office, connected by a catwalk that overlooks the courtyard patio and soaring library space on one side; and great room on the other.

Crossman does all his design work on the computer, building models of design creations. "I spin them around; it's like virtual reality."

But he admits, before he took mouse in hand, he began tinkering with the Wilson house design on a paper napkin while en-route to Spain.

"I had ten hours to kill, and I like to think about things for a long time before I begin to draw on the computer. By the time we landed, I had the basic floor plan worked out."

His subsequent design for the Wilson home earned him a San Diego Chapter AIA Merit Award in the "not-yet-built" category.

Crossman said that the staid design of the former house provided a minimal viewscape. "After you left the living room, you had these solid partitions, walls, that completely isolated you from the view," he observed. "You might as well have been in El Centro.

"We wanted to dematerialize the walls. Yes, there would still be walls, but they'd be mostly glass; and we worked with the opacity of the glass - it could go from clear to translucent to opaque, depending on needs to obscure bad views such as roadways and highlight fantastic water views, as well as provide for privacy. We played with the notion of transparency and reflections. Some of the resulting reflections were actually a nice surprise that presented themselves as the home was completed."

The house features a color palette of painted steel, "kind of a battleship gray," Crossman describes it, with stainless-steel countertops and nickel-chrome accents. "Because the house would be so over-the-top, we pulled back on materials so there wouldn't be too many things competing. There's very little wood, for example."

To enhance the light and color from the ocean and sky, cool stainless-steel accents reflect the light. A combination of blue concrete panels on the exterior, a single white wall derived from green and varying shades of glass infuse color and drama throughout the interior.

The home's lower level accommodates the home theatre, wine cellar and wine bar and garage. A stainless-steel turntable electronically turns automobiles around inside the garage.

An elevator serves the house's three levels. "We thought it would be good for occasionally transporting goods," said Pegge, "but it's in constant use." Our yellow Lab, Montrachet, can no longer do the stairs and has become the "Vator" girl. When you ask, 'Do you want to go up,' she heads for the elevator and waits for it to open. And our Golden Retriever, La Tache, likes to sleep in it at night."

While the contemporary design of the Wilson home may be somewhat unique on the island, it is truly a Coronado home; the entire design team involved in the project was local.

"Because of the open spaciousness, you can actually see and feel the house surrounding you no matter what room you're in, and the invisible lines between inside and out seem to provide a harmony for the soul," Pegge says. "When people ask us what we like best about our house, we have a unanimous answer for them.

"It's a fun house to live in."

RESOURCES...

• Architecture - Martin Crossman
• General contracting - Gillem Construction
• Engineering - Bill Gise
• Art design and installation - Jill Hardman, Arts & Frames by Wood Gallery
• Custom cabinets - Chuck Batsch and Paul Czerwiec