Pieter Weijnen's brand of maritime modernism brings a touch of magic to Amsterdam's Steigereiland, where the architect built his family's home. Inhabiting one of the development's narrow plots, the house harkens back to the area's nautical roots with a suspended shiplike story, visible from the street.

Architect Pieter Weijnen's tall, skinny blue house stands on Steigereiland, one of seven artificial islands dredged from Amsterdam's IJ Lake in IJburg, the city's most recent urban expansion plan. The house is not much older than the ground it's built upon and is surrounded by deep-blue waters and a dizzying range of forms, finishes and hues - just minutes away from the historic city center.

Weijnen secured one of IJburg's coveted "private plots" (parcels of land with fewer imposed aesthetic regulations) and built an appropriately whimsical structure for his family. "When I meet someone new to the area," he says, "they say, 'Oh, you live in that blue house with the fairytale boat in it.' It's become a local landmark."

The "fairytale boat", so visible from the outside, is also the first thing you see upon entering the house. Suspended above the ground floor, the enigmatic, scaly, blue-green mass hovers, just as likely the belly of a sea dragon as the hull of some fantasy ship. From below, the color and texture of the copper plates, with their beautiful verdigris, form a sculptural centerpiece for the house, articulating and enhancing the vertical thrust of the space rather than interrupting it.