Private Residence and Guest House in the Laurentian Mountains

Photos:

Marc Cramer (1-8), Gilles Saucier (9-10)

This residence and guest house is located near the ski hills of Mont Tremblant. Pierced in a singular gesture by an oblique interior stair, the main house consists of three bedrooms, living areas, a sauna, a transformable recreation room, and, typical of the region's cottages, a screened outdoor living room. The residence, composed of three superimposed volumes aligned with an entrance-level pool, is placed within a fold in the landscape, creating an intimate exterior space framed by the north façade and a three-meter-high rock outcrop. This location allows for several advantages in terms of exposure to the sun, wind, and the public realm.

Erosion seems to have caused the blocks to glide laterally, slightly out of synch with each other, yet together forming a harmonious, clear composition. Analogous to the other building blocks, the guest house is envisaged as a fourth prism that has slid westward. The pool deck, between the residence and guest house, affords a sense of enclosure while providing a breathtaking panorama of the rolling mountains. Due to the dramatic slope of the site, two of the volumes of the main house are visible from the entry; the three stacked blocks are only perceived once inside or from the lower portion of the site.

The design draws from the elements belonging to the site: its topography, rock formations, trees, ground cover. Local building traditions (i.e., the log house) are reinterpreted and revealed through chromatic and textural exploration. The house’s surfaces respond to the wooded site, where the verticality of the trees and tones of grey, brown, and green predominate. Echoing the dense context, the north façade is composed of rough-cut wood strips whose irregular spacing permits partially-hidden slit windows. The south façade is open to forest panorama, and the screened porch, seemingly caught between the three overlapping volumes, provides an outdoor living room perched over the wooded landscape.

Luminous interior volumes in translucent or opaque white – at times showing traces of underlying wood grain – maintain volumetric clarity. “’Rooms” find themselves somewhere between flowing and compartmentalized, offering the occupants multipurpose or interpretive spaces. The interior and exterior finishes acknowledge the craft of local building trades and complement the precise geometric form with elements of nature and roughness.