Cottage Living: A contemporary cabin blends into the landscape

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When architect Ian McDonald decided to trade a simple bungalow cottage that he and his wife bought in the early 1990s, he was just right between a cozy old cabin and a completely modern dwelling. I wanted to get the balance.

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“The original cottage was built in 1967. It wasn’t well built, but it was a ship with lots of family memories, so I developed a love for it. Every Friday night the kids I remember when we were so excited to get there, “he says of the cabin in Go Home Bay, an outskirts of the Georgian Bay Islands.

“In the end, the building started to break, and we had to replace it.” The new cottage is a flat modernist rectangle. Like the original, it sits on top of the high slabs of the Canadian Shield Rock, an area immortalized by the famous Group of Seven artists. The landscape is full of natural beauty, but it is becoming more and more vulnerable to development.

This is especially true for oversized structures that are “objects in this landscape,” McDonald warns. “In my opinion, it’s an unfortunate phenomenon. It means that your sense of natural landscape is diminished. No one goes to their cottage to see someone else’s cottage. You go there to be in nature. “

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The new cottage is low, long, close to the ground and disappears behind the forest thanks to the charcoal stain. “We made it as small as possible because scale is an important issue,” says McDonald’s. Sustainable features allow the cottage to step on the surrounding nature as lightly as possible. “We knew how hot the old cabin would be on a summer dog day, so we wanted to deal with those issues by building a new building.”

Irrigated rooftop greening promotes cooling with water drawn from the bay, external awnings reduce heat buildup while providing landscape views, and the main space is a screen-in pouch with lift and sliding doors. It will change to improve ventilation and use it. There is a possibility that the wind will blow.

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“Often, cottages tend to focus too much on the visual side,” says McDonald’s. “The characteristic of the cottage is that it opens, so you can hear the sound of the wind of the trees, the waves crashing on the shore, the sounds of birds and animals.”

The award-winning Go Home Bay Cottage Northern Hideaway: Canadian Cottages and Cabins (Images Publishing, May 16, 2022), a book that introduces a remote home that takes the word cabin to a luxurious level while paying homage to its surroundings.

The hideout shares a simple, contemporary architectural aesthetic, clean lines, and a simplified palette of natural materials. “They offer warmth, comfort and luxury, from which you can experience the vast fragments of the Canadian landscape in all seasons,” said Canadian designer, artist and educator Julia Yamlojik. It is mentioned in the introduction of the book.

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“These villas, which simplify relationships with the outdoors by careful orientation, creating fluid boundaries between the inside and outside, and framing the landscape, curate the natural experience of the inhabitants,” she says. “Many of the projects presented work with passive and active systems to minimize their environmental impact. Not only does the cottage experience lead to moments of joy, but the next generation of awareness and ecology. I hope to improve the management of the system. “

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Demand that exceeds supply

Royal LePage reports that total home prices in Canada’s recreational areas are projected to rise 13% to $ 640,710 this year as demand continues to outpace supply.

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“Demand for recreational facilities is significantly higher than inventories in many cottage areas across the country,” said Phil Soper, President and CEO. “The waterfront and mountaintop locations near the city are inherently limited, even on vast lands like Canada, and buyers are forced into multiple offer scenarios.”

The total value of single-family homes in Canada’s recreational area increased by 26.6% year-on-year to $ 567,000 in 2021. Over the same period, single-family waterfront properties totaled $ 976,000, up 21.5%. The total price of the condominium increased by 15.4% to $ 374,000.

In Ontario, total home prices in recreational areas are projected to rise 13% this year to $ 737,890. In 2021, the total price of single-family homes in the recreation market increased 34.6% year-on-year to $ 653,000. This is the highest price increase in the country. Over the same period, the total price of single-family waterfront real estate rose 31.8% to $ 888,000, and the total price of condominiums rose 20.7% to $ 496,000.