[MonkeyRonin]

A perch to view the watery wilderness

John Bentley Mays
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Mar. 06 2014, 11:58 AM EST
Last updated Thursday, Mar. 06 2014, 12:19 PM EST


On a deep-frozen afternoon last week, I visited a place on Lake Erie called Indigo House and, through its wide windows, saw one of those winter scenes I will probably never forget.

The expanse of lake ice stretched from the bluff the year-round residence is perched on out into the misty distance, toward the far American shore. Here was something wildly, bleakly beautiful that southern Canadian city-dwellers rarely experience even in our chilliest months – something desolate, severe, completely unforgiving. Here was winter in its essence, hard and grey as steel. Indigo House has been designed by Toronto architect Cindy Rendely to open toward this stunning view from every room.

In other ways, as well, the 3,380-square-foot structure has been made to sync with its high, exposed, weather-beaten site. There is nothing pretty or sentimentally rustic about it. The roof is flat, and the strict overall composition is a modernist matter of clearly articulated oblong or bevelled volumes bundled together.

Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/...ticle17344512/

The Long Embrace

Teeple Architects’ latest residential project in southern Ontario celebrates all that surrounds it: fields, trees and water


Residential House on the Lakefront
2011
Port Hope, Ontario

Architect
Teeple Architects
Toronto

Building Size
413 Square Metres

Lot Size
30 Hectares

Photos
Bob Gundu and Scott Norsworthy

In late fall, the farmland on the lakefront road into Port Hope, Ontario, is pristine, even idyllic: golden fields rolling toward a shimmering horizon of water, here and there clutches of tall trees, their leaves a brittle yellow or blazing red. As the main road turns into a gravel lane that winds through an open field, there is still little evidence that a newly built house, by Teeple Architects, lies straight ahead. Not, at any rate, until one catches a glimpse of the muted green, zinc-clad structure rising and curving up from the scrub and flaring toward the lake.

Set on 30 hectares, the two-storey dwelling at its highest point overlooks a rocky bluff that drops precipitously to the lake. But this unusually narrow, low-lying house really begins sunken in the region’s compact earth at its north end, with a rectangular lap pool and a whirlpool surrounded by a wooden deck and radiant-heated limestone. The pool is kept warm year round because the Danish owner prefers to swim in the dead of winter.

Read more: http://www.canadian-architects.com/e..._the_Lakefront