Hasta La Ideas

American firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson designed this wooden lodge as the holiday home for a family at the Kicking Horse Mountain ski resort in Canada (+ slideshow).

Kicking Horse Residence, which was named as one of the ten recipients of the American Institute of Architects‘ 2014 Housing Awards earlier this week, was designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson as a weekend retreat that can accommodate the family and their guests, but can also be left unoccupied for long periods of time.

“The clients desired a weekend gathering place for their active family of five that would allow for flexibility to accommodate larger groups of family and friends, and provide a direct connection to the outdoors for seasonal recreation,” said the architect.

A forest of aspen and spruce trees surrounds the site, so timber was chosen as the primary building material. But unlike the typical wooden lodges of the region, the house features an angular structure intended to reflect the clients’ Scandinavian heritage.

“The Kicking Horse Residence is a family retreat that uses evocative forms to embrace the natural world,” said the architect.

The three-storey house is made up of two wings, connected by a central staircase. The largest of the two is an asymmetric volume accommodating the main living and sleeping spaces, while its rectilinear partner contains a family room offering views of the mountain peaks.

The building nestles into the slope of the site, creating entrances on both the lower and middle levels. The first functions as the main access and the second is a landing providing access to nearby ski and bicycle trails.

Bedrooms are scattered throughout the house. Three sleeping spaces are located in the loft, while two master bedrooms sit at opposite ends of the middle storey, creating a cantilever at the front of the building.

The base of the house is surrounded by concrete and contains a garage, a mudroom and a play space for the children.

Here’s a project description from Bohlin Cywinski Jackson:

Kicking Horse Residence

The clients desired a weekend gathering place for their active family of five that would allow for flexibility to accommodate larger groups of family and friends and provide a direct connection to the outdoors for seasonal recreation. They requested careful arrangement of the program to maintain privacy on the narrow lot between two neighbouring residences, while focusing on the views and providing direct access to nearby ski and bike trails.

While Kicking Horse Mountain resort is a relatively new ski destination, the majority of the custom homes in the area still take the form of traditional timber structures. The clients appreciated the intimate scale and warmth of traditional mountain lodges but wished to explore the possibility of creating a Modernist cabin more rooted in their Scandinavian heritage that connected directly to the landscape. The sloping site is adjacent to a ski trail and surrounded by a forest of aspen and spruce trees. Located between two neighbouring residences, the careful arrangement of program maintains privacy through the thoughtful composition of windows, while focusing on the views and providing access to the nearby ski and bike trails.

The house is composed of two primary elements: a dense bar along the northern edge of the site containing the sleeping and bath spaces, and an open shell with living and dining spaces oriented toward the extraordinary mountain views. A central stair volume links these two forms, with the main entrance at the lower level and an upper landing for ski access on the west side.

The linear form of the sleeping spaces cantilevers over a board-formed concrete base containing the garage, mudroom, and playroom. A standing seam metal roof folds over the peak to become an articulated wall with operable vents, bringing light and air into the loft spaces. These lofts contain bunk beds that allow flexible sleeping arrangements for children or guests.

Anchored by a tall concrete fireplace, the geometric form containing the living and dining spaces floats above the forest floor, allowing natural drainage patterns to flow uninterrupted through the site. Plywood-clad walls and ceiling planes extend to the exterior, framing alpine views and sheltering an outdoor deck.

Given its function as a weekend retreat, the house was designed to perform for extended periods without occupancy. The design inherently reduces exposure to natural drainage patterns by limiting the building footprint, and we worked directly with the contractor to detail the below grade drainage system to perform most efficiently for the soils on site. Electrical, heating, and security systems are monitored and controlled remotely so the client is made immediately aware of any issues, and an emergency generator was supplied in case of power outage.

The evocative forms of the house are oriented to capture daylight and views to the stunning mountain peaks above, but also act to effectively shed snow from the massive storms that move through the area. The client chose a local general contractor, native to the Golden, BC area, with a long history of building in remote areas. They enjoy both the craft involved in building intricate wooden structures from locally sourced timbers and also heading outdoors after a day of hard work.

Wood is a primary natural resource in this region. The local Louisiana Pacific Mill is a lifeline for the town of Golden, and a project goal was to express the natural diversity of wood in the architecture.

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holiday home at a Canadian ski resort appeared first on Dezeen.

The lower storey of this house in Ontario by Toronto studio Williamson Chong Architects is wrapped by a concrete wall that burrows into a hillside, while the upper floor is an overhanging box clad with red-stained timber (+ slideshow).

Named House in Frogs Hollow, the residence is located on a 40-hectare rural estate on the edge of Georgian Bay, and was designed by Williamson Chong Architects for a pair of avid cyclists.

Rather than positioning the house at a vantage point atop a hill, the architects chose a site at the base of the slope, allowing them to submerge part of the ground floor into the landscape of clay earth, grasses and hawthorns.

This places the building within a network of pathways and bike trails, some of which were created by the clients, but also including routes used by native horses, or those taken by local residents on snowmobiles.

“The house is not the final destination, but a stopping place within [the clients’] network of activity,” said the architects.

One long concrete wall carves out a space for the house’s ground floor, lining the edge of an L-shaped plan that wraps and protects a terrace on the eastern side of the building.

Wooden shiplap boards are arranged vertically across the walls of the boxy upper floor and have been stained with a linseed oil-based pigment to give them a dark red tone.

“Designed as an undulating rhythm of varying widths, thin boards are CNC milled to a shallow depth while wider boards are milled with deep striations, casting long shadows that track the sun as it moves around the house,” explained the architects.

Inside the house, a staircase is screened behind an undulating timber wall, leading up from a family living room and kitchen to three bedrooms on the top floor. The living room is also located upstairs and features three glazed walls.

During the cold winter months the house is warmed throughout by underfloor heating and makes the most of solar gain with a series of large south-facing windows. A passive ventilation system helps to keep the house cool in summer without the need for air conditioning.

Photography is by Bob Gundu.

Here’s some information from Williamson Chong Architects:

House in Frogs Hollow

The House in Frogs Hollow, a 2000sf country retreat, is located on a long slope of the Niagara Escarpment overlooking Georgian Bay. The property is a collection of eroded clay hills and protected watershed zones blanketed with a dense field of hawthorn and native grasses. It is not picturesque, but tough and impenetrable.

The clients, who gather at the property throughout the year, are avid cyclists who spent months on the 100 acre property prior to construction cutting in discreet mountain biking trails and learning the paths of the horses and snowmobiles as they emerge from the community over the seasons. Because of their connection to the landscape, a primary site strategy was to resist the inclination to build on top of the hills where one could survey the property in its entirety and instead carve out a building area at the base of the hillside. The house is not the final destination, but a stopping place within their network of activity.

Carved into the landscape, the muscular tectonic of the long concrete wall figuratively clears the site for building while bridging the natural and tempered environments. The concrete has a toughness that mirrors the landscape, providing protection from the prevailing winter winds. During the summer months the wall provides patio shade, creating pools of cooler air that are passively drawn through the house.

Entry is at the west end of the concrete wall and into a service bar containing the stair, kitchen, office, bike workshop, storage room, and mechanical room. This functional zone serves as a backdrop to the glassed in living area that opens on three sides to an extended view of the rolling landscape.

The second level hovers above the concrete wall and living space. It contains the bedrooms, bathrooms, and family room in a tight wrapper of customised shiplap siding. Designed as an undulating rhythm of varying widths, thin boards are CNC milled to a shallow depth while wider boards are milled with deep striations, casting long shadows that track the sun as it moves around the house. The siding is stained with a linseed oil based iron oxide pigment that requires reapplication only once every 15 years.

The first and second floors are connected by a figured stair enclosure. This digitally fabricated element is designed to filter light from the clerestory volume above. At the ground floor it carves into the area below its upper run to gather more space at the entry and allow for a seating area.

The house’s connection to the land is reinforced not only in its architectural form, but also in its environmental footprint. The house is heated with radiant floor loops that supplement the passive winter heat gain from south-facing windows. In addition, there is no mechanical cooling. Instead, the stair tower and operable windows facilitate passive ventilation that draws cool air through the house from shaded exterior areas. Natural materials and pigments were used throughout and a small square footage was maintained to further reduce construction costs and keep future energy consumption to a minimum.

Total Floor Area: 2000 sqft
Design Team: Betsy Williamson, Partner Shane Williamson, Partner Donald Chong, Partner Kelly Doran, Maya Przybylski
Structural Engineering: Blackwell Bowick Partnership Ltd.
Construction Management: Wilson Project Management Inc.
Millwork: Speke Klein Inc.
Siding Fabrication: Tomek Bartczak, Gavin Berman, Peter Odegaard, Taryn Sheppard, Byron White
Stair Fabrication: Byron White, Jeff Powers

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burrows into the Ontario landscape appeared first on Dezeen.

This holiday home on the southern coast of Nova Scotia perches on a row of narrow concrete fins just metres from the Atlantic Ocean (+ slideshow).

Designed as a holiday home for a couple by Canadian studio MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects, the property is situated close to a small fishing village on a plot where a meadow meets the rocky coastline.

The clients asked for a sanctuary where they could look out at the sun setting over the sea, and the architects responded by designing the building as a “landscape-viewing instrument, with its side opened to the Atlantic Ocean horizon, and its end a focusing aperture to the sunset.”

The architects raised the building off the ground “to allow any rogue waves which might crest the granite edge to pass under the house,” but left one corner open to the elements to create a terrace overlooking the sea.

The exterior is clad in corrugated galvanised aluminium to provide a robust shield against the prevailing weather and the underside of the raised structure is covered in the same marine-grade plywood used in local boat building.

A series of broad wooden stairs lead to a covered opening with doors on either side connecting the master bedroom with the rest of the house. Large sliding barn doors can be closed to seal the building during storms.

The main living space is located next to the terrace and features glass walls that frame views of the ocean, while clerestory windows above the beds allow the occupants to look up at the sky and a low window provides views from the bathtub.

Interior finishes are kept deliberately minimal to focus attention on the views. “When seated in front of the warming hearth, the land between the house and the water’s edge disappears from view, and the plane of the polished grey concrete floor extends to the ever-changing surface of the ocean,” said the architects.

Photography is by Greg Richardson.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Sunset Rock

Place / Landscape

This home is dramatically sited along the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, on the southern coast of Nova Scotia, a landscape defined by massive pieces of exposed granite, and the drama of the open ocean. Running parallel to the rugged the shoreline, the house grips the edge fulfilling the owners desire to have as intimate of a connection to the ocean as possible.

Its cantilevered end reaches out over Sunset Rock, its namesake and the owners most loved place on their site. Many evenings were spent viewing the spectacular local sunsets from this location, long before the idea of placing a house here was conceived. As a result the house is an extension of the rock, creating a landscape-viewing instrument, with its side opened to the Atlantic Ocean horizon, and its end a focusing aperture to the sunset.

Program

Built as a vacation home for a professional couple who fell in love with the local people and pace of life of this small fishing village, it is a retreat from the pace of the major metropolis in which they work. A sanctuary just steps from the ocean, it is a place in which to read, reflect, and write, while living within the remarkable view.

On approach, the house appears as a long metal blade marking the transition from meadow to ocean, its monolithic form punctuated by a generous stair leading to the framed view of the ocean horizon provided by the covered entry deck. A series of barn doors allow for the metal skin to be completed, providing protection of the windows from any storms that may come. And as a further consideration to its environment, the house lightly touches the ground, resting on a series of concrete fins perpendicular to the shoreline, engineered to allow any rouge waves which might crest the granite edge to pass under the house.
An asymmetrical bite out of the end of the form creates a sheltered viewing deck from which to enjoy the sunset, while above this an interior loft allows for inhabiting the steel structure, and provides a cocooning space in which to work with focused views along the shoreline.

The narrow floor plate provides excellent cross ventilation, while generous windows to the view invite the sun in to warm the thermal mass of the concrete floors. The main living area has walls of glass to the view, with no partitions above 8’, allowing for the full expression of the volumes sculptural nature. Body scaled bedboxes open upward without ceilings providing views to the ever-changing day and night sky through clearstory windows. The bathing room again responds to the theme of water, with a long, narrow low window for viewing the ocean waves while seated in the bathtub. The master suite is separated from the public spaces of the house by the covered deck allowing for retreat and privacy.

Craft / Building / Material

With its grey metal skin the house disappears within the blanket of fog which frequents the site. The durable and economical corrugated galvalume was chosen not only for its minimal beauty, but also to endure the environmental conditions of the houses proximity to the ocean. The underbelly of the house is protected by marine grade plywood, a material used extensively in the local boat building industry. The calm sculptural nature of the house, expressed both in its form and materials, are drawn from the vernacular and ethic of the local buildings used in the commercial fishery. Many of those involved in the building of the home were equally comfortable building a boat for lobster fishing as they are building a house.

The interior pallet is restrained, almost completely white except for the horizontal surfaces of concrete and granite, and the exposed steel structure. This allows the interior surfaces to be of minimal distraction and dissolve into the background as the power and immediacy of the ocean is invited in. When seated in front of the warming hearth, the land between the house and the water’s edge disappears from view, and the plane of the polished grey concrete floor extends to the ever-changing surface of the ocean.

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by MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

This extension to a woodland home in Ontario by Canadian studio UUfie features charred cedar walls and a mirrored entrance (+ slideshow).

Japanese architect Eiri Ota and Canadian architect Irene Gardpoit Chan of UUfie designed the small cabin, named Lake Cottage, to add large living and dining rooms to a family house beside the Kawartha Lakes.

The structure has a steeply pitched roof covered with black steel, while its two gabled ends are clad with cedar that has been charred to protect it from termites and fire.

“Lake Cottage is a reinterpretation of living in a tree house where nature is an integral part of the building,” said the architects, whose past projects include an apartment with velvet curtains for partitions.

The entrance sits within a sheltered recess that spans the front of the cabin. Mirrored panels cover the sides and ceiling of the space, intended to integrate the building with the forest by reflecting the surrounding trees.

A living room occupies a rectangular central space, while the dining room forms a link to the existing house.

A staircase made from a single log leads up to the first-floor attic, where walls follow the steep angle of the roof. Rounded wooden shingles decorate one side and are visible from the living room through a row of internal windows.

Timber panels line walls, floors and ceilings elsewhere in the cabin, and a wood-burning stove keeps the space warm during cold winter months.

Photography is by Naho Kubota.

Here’s some information from UUfie:

Lake Cottage

Lake Cottage is a reinterpretation of living in a tree house where nature is an integral part of the building. In a forest of birch and spruce trees along the Kawartha Lakes, the cottage is designed as a two storey, multi-uses space for a large family. The structure composed of a 7 metre-high A-frame pitch roof covered in black steel and charred cedar siding. A deep cut in the building volume creates a cantilever overhang for a protected outdoor terrace with mirrors to further give the illusion of the building containing the forest inside.

This mixture of feeling between nature and building continue into the interior. The main living space is design as a self-contained interior volume, while the peripheral rooms are treated as part of the building site. Fourteen openings into this grand living space reveal both inhabited spaces, skies and trees, equally treated and further articulated with edges finishes of interior panel kept raw to show the inherit nature of materials used. This abstract nature of the interior spaces allows imagination to flow, and those spaces that could be identified as a domestic interior can suddenly become play spaces. A solid timber staircase leads to a loft which has the feeling of ascending into tree canopies as sunlight softy falls on wall covered in fish-scaled shingle stained in light blue.

Using local materials and traditional construction methods, the cottage incorporated sustainable principles. The black wood cladding of exterior is a technique of charring cedar that acts as a natural agent against termite and fire. Thick walls and roof provide high insulation value, a central wood hearth provides heat and deep recessed windows and skylights provide natural ventilation and lighting.

Lake Cottage is designed with interior and exterior spaces connected fluidly and repeat the experience of living within the branches of a tree.

Title: Lake Cottage
Location: Bolsover, Ontario
Architect: UUfie
General contractor: Level Design Build
Principal use: cottage
Total floor area: 65.00sqm
Structure: wood
Design period: 2010.1-2010.8
Construction period: 2010.10-2013.1

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by UUfie appeared first on Dezeen.

This lakeside lodge in rural Ontario was designed by Toronto firm MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects as a weekend retreat for a family of five (+ slideshow).

Clear Lake Cottage has a long narrow body with a metal-clad exterior and a hipped roof. It sits around 15 metres from the edge of the water and is tucked behind a cluster of trees.

Replacing a smaller structure with a tin roof, MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects (MJMA) was asked to design a residence that would open out to the landscape as freely as it predecessor.

“The goal was to blend with the rural character of the quiet lake community and provide a clean modern environment that engages the landscape and captures a ‘cottage’ feel,” explain the architects.

The building is orientated eastwards to maximise views towards Clear Lake. This elevation is also stretched outward at the corners, giving the building a trapezoidal plan.

Rooms inside are divided into two rows, determined by different privacy requirements. Living rooms and a master bedroom are positioned along the front of the house, where they benefit from lake views, while extra bedrooms are lined up along the rear and include a first-floor loft inserted beneath the peak of the roof.

The smallest of two terraces sits within a recess on the eastern elevation, where it can catch the sun at breakfast time, and the second wraps around the north-east corner to provide an outdoor space beyond the living room.

The architects used Douglas fir to construct the angled roof, then clad the exterior walls in black corrugated metal as a reference to tar-painted fishing shacks. “The result is decidedly modern, but raw and industrial too,” they add.

See more Canadian houses on Dezeen, including one that appears to be climbing up a hill and one with patterned walls of concrete brick.

Photography is by Ben Rahn at A Frame Photography.

Read on more more details from MJMA:

Clear Lake Cottage

A Toronto family of five required a new four-season cottage to replace their existing 1950’s structure. The goal was to blend with the rural character of the quiet lake community and provide a clean modern environment that engages the landscape and captures a ‘cottage’ feel.

The site is located on Clear Lake in Seguin Township, Ontario. The lot has a large frontage and an existing dock. The orientation is predominately to the east collecting warmth and direct light in the morning. The building sits quietly behind trees away from the water.

Outside of their direct program requirements there were two related and compelling goals the clients wanted to achieve. First they wanted all the benefits of modern design: clean lines, abundant natural light, connection with the outdoors; but they also wanted to blend contextually with the character and humility of the surroundings. Secondly, although they requested a winterised facility, they did not want to lose the connection with the land they had come to appreciate in their uninsulated, tin-roofed dwelling.

It was decided a peaked sloped roof would be used. This could achieve an ambiguously modern vernacular feel and was beneficial for snow and water shedding. Termed the ‘Campsite’ [like tents around a campsite]. This approach yielded interesting opportunities to define exterior spaces. To meet the budget a singular and rational peaked roof system was employed – ‘the Bigtop’. A single tent pole supporting a giant hip roof housed the volumes below.

The program was consolidated into 4 logical masses: Master Suite, Bedrooms, Utility/Den and Living Space. These masses we arranged in terms of degree of privacy required; north to south. It was then determined which spaces would have forest views and which would have lake views. The masses were arranged to frame exterior spaces and capture an ambiguous indoor/outdoor condition. The plan was rationalised as a rectangle then skewed to a trapezoidal shape to maximise the lake front exposure.

The resulting formal expression of the building expressed an archetypal ‘house’ quality. Roof and walls merge in a singular streamline form. This form captures within it outdoor spaces creating a spatial continuum inside and out. The massing along the forest side became connected above by an open loft space. This bedroom/utility bar is treated as a stained pine slat ‘Black Box’ and is an extension of the materiality of the exterior.

Punctures to the building envelope, and exposure of the Douglas Fir roof and wall structure capture outdoor space, and create a spatial continuum – a porosity of inside to out.

Taking cues from the client’s fondness for Scandinavian fishing shacks, with their pine tar-painted cedar, the building is clad in black corrugated metal, a cost effective North American interpretation of this shoreline aesthetic. The result is decidedly modern, but raw and industrial too.

This approach to a ‘high and low’ material palette and divergent typologies is a strategy to disarm the precious nature of ‘designed’ space.

The interior is detailed to contrast the exterior black cladding. The interior material palette of Sapelle window frames, retroplate concrete floors, and Douglas Fir plywood works as a visual counterpoint to the dark, textured exterior finish. This conceptual reading reinforces the Scandinavian influence.

Douglas Fir plywood was selected based on the client’s preference for a non-drywall interior shell. Exposed areas of Douglas Fir framing are either open to above (morning terrace) or clad with smoke-tinted corrugated acrylic (arrival spaces).

The rooms along the forest side support an upper open loft space. This bedroom/utility bar is treated as a stained oak ‘Black Box’ and is an extension of the materiality of the exterior – signifying enclosure.

The screened porch has a bi-folding partition opening it to the cottage interior. 50% of the glazed envelope can be left in the ‘open’ screened position allowing for the cottage to be exposed to breeze, fragrances, acoustics, and shadow play – capturing the natural feel of the site.

Location: Township of Sequin, Ontario, Canada
Architect: MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects (MJMA)
Year completion: summer 2012
Project size: 215 sqm

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Jaunkalns Miller Architects appeared first on Dezeen.