Modernism beneath a monumental picket roof – try this household retreat in Quebec

This new home – a modernist household retreat – sits on a shoreline plot beside Lac Archambault, a website that was beforehand used for a long-closed summer time camp. Positioned close to the small city of Saint-Donat-de-Montcalm in Quebec’s Lanaudière area, about two hours north of Montreal, La Maison de la Baie de l’Ours was designed by Montreal-based architects ACDF, based in 2006. The agency’s present companions, Maxime-Alexis Frappier, Joan Renaud and Étienne Laplante Courchesne, head up an 86-strong staff of designers working throughout a wide range of fields, from giant business developments and neighborhood tasks by to non-public homes.

The picket roof cantilevers out over the construction

(Picture credit score: Adrien Williams)

ACDF was lucky to discover a prime website inside the plot, a naturally flat space that had good entry and a relative lack of vegetation. This was the plain spot to construct the home, the type of which might be damaged down into three key parts. Probably the most distinguished is the massive timber-framed roof construction, composed of a lattice of glulam beams which can be evident all through the inside and exterior of the home. This construction is cantilevered out over the sting of the supporting partitions to supply lined areas of out of doors area.

The roof also serves to frame views of the lake — The roof additionally serves to border views of the lake

The second compositional ingredient is the stone partitions that maintain up the roof. On the plan, they learn as thick rectangular slashes in opposition to the slender timber framing and glazed partitions, creating one thing akin to a De Stijl portray within the panorama. Clad with the identical native stone used on the exterior terraces, the partitions anchor the home within the native panorama.

The stone walls are continued out into the landscape — The stone partitions are continued out into the panorama

Lastly, there’s the distinction arrange by the darkish wooden cladding used within the bedrooms and repair areas. The home thus turns into a sample of exterior-facing and interior-facing areas, with glass partitions defining the important thing residing areas and a extra inside panorama housing the locations to sleep.

The dark timber cladding conceals a secondary kitchen and utility areas — The darkish timber cladding conceals a secondary kitchen and utility areas

Naturally, the lie of the land knowledgeable the orientation of the home. The precept residing areas overlook the lake to the west, whereas the north and east views are shielded by the sting of the forest. The architects describe the undertaking as ‘providing a residing expertise deeply rooted within the panorama… establishing an intimate dialogue between nature and its occupants’. Maxime Frappier describes how the present topography and views of the positioning had been retained and amplified. ‘We didn’t wish to impose a form on the panorama – we wished to disclose what was already there,’ he says.

The house in the landscape — The home within the panorama

The principal quantity beneath the roof is hooked up to 3 parts, together with a main bed room suite to the north, accessed by a glazed hall, and a cluster of three ensuite kids’s bedrooms to the south, separated by a playroom space and a devoted kids’s lounge with hooked up bunkroom for company. The ultimate ingredient to the east comprises the storage, with service space tucked away within the coronary heart of the construction, together with a windowless media room.

The media room, showcasing the ceiling structure used throughout the living spaces — The media room, showcasing the ceiling construction used all through the residing areas

Nice effort was made to make sure that each lengthy vista and run of glazing introduced a spectacular view. The central backbone of the home runs virtually its full size, a hall that leads from the primary bed room all the best way to the playroom. The partitions lengthen into the panorama as low-built stone constructions, or murets, that create privateness and add an additional framing gadget, whereas each the primary bed room and kids’s rooms have their very own personal terrace space. Above the youngsters’s bedrooms is a second storey containing a visitor suite.

A glazed corridor leads to the primary suite, at right — A glazed hall results in the first suite, at proper

The sunken panels, or coffers, within the picket ceiling are lit from inside and likewise comprise acoustic insulation, to melt the texture of the primary residing areas. Synthetic lighting is paired with plenty of rooflights that improve the home’s relationship with nature and the seasons.

The coffers in the timber ceiling are illuminated from within — The coffers within the timber ceiling are illuminated from inside

Along with the sequence of lined and open exterior terraces, the inside residing areas additionally serve up plenty of distinct, secluded environments. These embrace the centrally positioned eating room, the sunken residing space and the distinguished hearth that’s seen from all the first residing areas.

The private terrace outside the primary bedroom suite, with the chimney of the main fireplace beyond — The personal terrace exterior the first bed room suite, with the chimney of the primary hearth past

Consistent with the home’s function as a retreat and leisure area, there’s a secondary kitchen hid inside the darkish wooden ingredient. A beneficiant outside eating space, full with insect screens and a big outside hearth, provides one other layer of integration with nature.

One of the children's bedrooms — One of many kids’s bedrooms

In keeping with the architects, the home represents a mix of ‘exact composition, sincere materiality, and fixed consideration to spatial expertise… [the] structure right here turns into a medium of connection between folks, between inside and exterior, between the constructed and the pure’.