Country Homes

The original 1950’s ‘arts and crafts’ bungalow located in a ‘leafy’ Port Credit neighbourhood steps from Lake Ontario was a little cramped for a family of five.

Rather than tear down the original house and build a new larger home as is the norm these days, the client wanted to expand the house without impacting upon the extensive mature landscape that includes a small pond beside the house.

The solution was to create a vertical addition. The addition was set back from the ridge line of the bungalow’s roof to ensure the scale and form of the original home remained legible. By off setting the second floor addition, the design provided the much needed sleeping rooms for the family but also offered outdoor covered spaces for El Fresco dining and entertaining which were protected from direct sunlight or an unexpected rain shower.

The master bedroom was designed to project beyond the original building and hover over the beautiful landscape below. A large window provides the clients with a wonderful view of their intimate property. To minimize the impact on the vegetation, helical piles were used to support the projecting addition.

The addition was clad in fibre-cement panels in a charcoal grey that blends with the roof of the original house while providing a contemporary architectural expression quite distinct from the original bungalow below. The juxtaposition between the old and the new enhances the qualities and textures of the original bungalow while providing the family with a house that is twice the size.

This house is located in the Caledon Hills on farmland which is still cultivated.

The landscape is subtle compared to some of our more northern projects located on rugged sites in the Canadian Shield. The goal was to create a house which not only fit into the landscape but also integrates the interior with the exterior.

The main floor is configured as the entry foyer, mudroom, great room, screened porch and master suite, and the lower level has three bedrooms, a family room and games room below the second porch, all with maximized daylight in a walk-out condition.

This property encompasses a valley created by a natural watershed, resolving itself into a small lake surrounded by steep, wooded, sheltering hills.

The environmentally sensitive site demanded a design proposal confined to a pre-existing development footprint. The design team focused on a solution that would reinforce the compositional beauty of the site through the use of natural materials and simple geometric planes, and spaces in a highly transparent configuration.

In conjunction with a new two-storey vacation home on the site, the project also included the design of a small boathouse pavilion on the lake. The richness and warmth of the wood reinforces the connection to the site as a re-interpretation of the verdant natural setting outside.