Like many in the Southcoast region of farms and fields and ocean vistas, Kim Saal did not think fondly of the towering concrete edifice that rises from a high hill across from Sakonnet Vineyards. When it was for sale four years ago, he had no interest in going to see it.

But his partner, Kate Bechtold, was very interested, and she convinced him to take a look. On his first steps into the home, he was smitten.

“The second I walked in, I said to the realtor, ‘Guess what? You’re going to have a sale,’ ” Saal said recently, four years after buying the most unique home Little Compton has ever seen.

Built in the Brutalist style, marked by steel and concrete and modular lines, the home along West Main Road triggers visceral reactions — shock, curiosity, fascination, awe. It resembles almost nothing else in the region of farmhouses and old Colonials built into rolling fields that trickle down to the water.

The approach to the home triggers those same feelings.Vertical sheets of concrete rise from the earth, reached by a long set of stairs leading to a pure glass entryway. Are you entering a home or a five-star executive retreat seen by only an elite few?

Inside, everything changes. The home is sunlight and warmth and vistas meant for postcards.

“Outside, you think it’s going to be hard and cold. But you come inside and it’s warm and comfortable and easy,” Bechtold said.

The home is constructed of two sets of concrete walls, with insulation in between. They diminish the effects of whatever is happening outside. Though open and wide, with towering ceilings, the spaces feel warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

Wherever the concrete ends, glass begins. “This place is so bright,” Bechtold said during a tour of their home. “There are days I walk in and feel like I should turn the lights off.” Yet the lights aren’t on — the sun is, streaming in from high, recessed skylights and endless walls of windows.

The windows also connect the interior of the home with the spectacular views in all directions. A farm lies to the north, another farm to the south, and the Sakonnet River to the west, spilling into the Atlantic Ocean.

The majority of the house is designed to face west. It inspired Saal and Bechtold to reimagine some of their prime living space.

The original designer and owner of the house positioned an enormous dining table beneath a chandelier in the main living area. The new owners quickly realized they were wasting the most spectacular views in the house.

“I’m not going to waste the best part of the house for a dining room we never use,” Saal said. So they turned the formal dining area into a cozy living space, and they relax most days on sofas and chairs to enjoy the best views in the house, looking west and south toward the ocean and the tip of the Newport peninsula.

The connection between the home and its surroundings is so strong, “Even on the most brutal winter day, you feel like you’re living outside,” Bechtold said. “At night, if I need to go to the kitchen, I walk through here and everything is so clear, above and all around. The stars just come through to you. You feel like you’re outside in the stars.”

Discovering the Southcoast

The ocean views and star-filled nights are familiar to Saal. A cardiologist and hospital administrator who retired a year ago, he spent much of his career working and living in Boston. That was until he discovered the Southcoast region about 30 years ago. When he was looking to buy a second home outside the city, a good friend said to him, “Do you want a vacation home, or a second home?”

Saal remembers the conversation today, three decades later. “He said to me, ‘A vacation home, every time you have a vacation, you go there. It’s magical, but you have to go over a bridge, or take a ferry; you have to do something to get there. The second home, you can use all the time. It may not be as magical, but you don’t have to do anything fancy to get there.’ I decided I wanted a second home, I didn’t want a vacation home,” Saal said.

“And that’s when I discovered the Southcoast, which no one in Boston knew about.

I lived in Massachusetts since basically since 1970, and I never knew about the Southcoast. It just was unknown.”

That ended when he bought a magnificent property in Westport, known as the Tuckerman Farm, and lived there for 20 years. That was his home before he and Bechtold fell in love with Little Compton’s most unique property.

Now that they’ve been there for four years, they are reluctant to leave. They love so much about the home — the sunlight and the views and warmth of the spaces — but also the layout and design. Though it holds four levels of space, they spend nearly all their time on one level, with the living quarters and the social quarters separated by a long hallway of glass. It’s like leaving the five-star lounge to retire to the five-star bedroom suite.

The lower level contains a home theater, endless cabinets for storage and organization, a gleaming garage that can hold four of car-collector Saal’s magnificent  vehicles, and 2,000 square feet of unfinished living space. The upper level contains two guest bedrooms, cozy, quiet and luxurious, with a narrow staircase leading to a rooftop deck that must be seen to be believed. Flat, enormous and sprawling in all directions, it offers sweeping panoramic views of Little Compton, the ocean and much of the region.

The owners are reluctant to leave, but they are leaving because Bechtold’s two daughters and grandchildren have settled out west, and the pull of family is too strong. So the home is on the market, listed by Cherry Arnold and Mott & Chace Sotheby’s for $4,450,000.

Wary as he was to even look at 155 West Main Road in the beginning, Saal is just as appreciative of how the Little Compton community has embraced and welcomed them.

“Before we bought it, my fear was, ‘How is the town going to react to us?’ And the reality is, there have been zero negative reactions. The typical reactions are, ‘We hate to admit it, but it’s really cool.’ Or, ‘We’d love to see it.’ We welcome them to come see it, and they’re all pleasantly surprised. People have been really great to us.”

Many of the locals did see the home earlier this summer, when Bechtold hosted a gathering for one of the local garden clubs. More than 60 guests visited the house, most for the first time, and reactions, as expected, were strong.

“They all loved it,” Bechtold said. “When they got inside, the same group asked to come back in August and have an event with their husbands.”

They too were smitten by the beauty within.