Modern Canadian House | Cascade House | Toronto | Canada | Paul Raff Studio

Perched among old growth on a gently sloping site, this house is a marriage of environmentally responsible building strategies and elegant architectural composition. The design is shaped around the concept of making visible the interface between habitation and landscape.
Oriented on a strict Cartesian axis, the house is designed to maximize its potential for natural light. The integrated design combines a high-performance building envelope with passive solar design systems as an effective environmentally-sustainable strategy for its northern context. An expansive window along the building's south face allows the low winter sun to penetrate and warm the house. A large internal slate wall captures available solar energy to warm the house during evening hours. Smaller apertures within the wall dapple adjacent rooms with light. Resonating within the house, the slate wall frames views and guides movement.......more