Step through the nine-foot pivot door and the house all but disappears. Wall-length sliding glass gives way to a 2,000-square-foot terrace, and beyond it, the water does the talking — pale shallows over the sandbar, then lagoon, turquoise, cerulean, azure, cobalt, and finally the deep ink blue where the bank drops away.

Tip of the Tail was designed around that view, not in spite of it. A glass-walled pool sits at the edge of the terrace like an extension of the sea itself. Every one of the five ensuite bedrooms opens onto the same horizon. The result is a villa that reads more like a yacht's aft deck than a traditional Turks & Caicos great house — contemporary where the island's colonial-style rentals are ornamental, and open where they're closed off.