Country House | La Cornette | Canton de Cleveland | Quebec | yh2

Built on the slope of a small hill, La Cornette is a country house open to the pastoral landscape that surrounds it. Under a soaring roof resembling a nun’s cornet wimple is a roomy dwelling modelled on traditional Quebec houses of old that lodged large families and their relatives. This house for celebrations and holidays, designed for two families, is set into the naturally uneven terrain in a way that brings each level into direct contact with the surrounding natural environment. It offers a resting place for all guests under its large gable in a series of bedrooms and unusual sleeping areas. An out-scaled structure, like the agricultural buildings that surround it, the house is both traditional in its morphology and innovative in its use of materials. Shingled with raw fibre-cement panels on the walls and roof, it is a house beyond the domestic scale, simple and rot-proof, capable of standing the test of time. The house is striated with bands of horizontal windows, giant louvers that cut the sun at its most powerful, with new points of view at each level. It is protected by its wimple from the hot summer sun and inundated with light in the winter, needing neither air-conditioning nor heating on sunny days. The interior is in wood, painted or natural, in planks or panels, composed almost exclusively of made-to-measure furniture pieces:
o from the refectory table for meals to the day table with hideaway television set;
o from the large wraparound couch in the living room to the stainless-steel kitchen island;
o from the balustrade bookshelf along the stairway to the wall night-lights made of aluminum panels with cut-outs of fireflies, fish, and frogs;
o from wall-to-wall beds where people sleep foot-to-foot to overhanging bunk beds floating in the landscape It is a playground for architects, children, and adults, a vacation colony lost in the countryside.........more

House In Saint-Anne-des-Lacs, Québec,Canada | yh2

Area:1700 sq.ft.
Design team: yh2
Benoît Boivin
Marie-Claude Hamelin
Loukas Yiacouvakis

In the Laurentian forest, an abstract geometric composition, a spatial arrangement of painted wood blocks placed on a rocky promontory. A cubical house with three blocks of living space conforming to the site’s topography and the natural landscapes surrounding it: the central block, semi-interior, semi-exterior veranda grouping living room, dining room, and kitchen, is the core of the house the den block, a wooden box floating above the cliff, opens a panoramic view of the lake below finally, the bedroom block built on two floors, midlevel from and more opaque then the central block, turned toward the forest bordering the house to the north....more

House In Saint-Hippolyte, Québec,Canada | yh2

Area:1850 sq.ft.
Design team: yh2
Benoît Boivin,Marie-Claude Hamelin,Loukas Yiacouvakis

In the Laurentians, a dense forest on a slight hill, down-turns into the expansion of a small river. Through the trees, the body of a black building is divided into three blocks linked by glass passageways. Three blocks of a home, mid-level from each other, are all in direct contact with the earth. Three blocks of proper identity, offering intimacy between each and open to nature: An entry block, open on two levels and includes the adolescents quarters and family room. A daytime block, central space, friendly, opens onto the terrace. A private block, owners suite, isolated from the rest of the home. On the northeast side of the house, a large section of bent corten steel connects the blocks together while defining a series of outdoor settings, always against the light. The chiaroscuro of the forest while both inside and outside the home, the black / white / orange / rust / bark / shadow / light / transparency / opacity.

Architecture of meeting and superposition of different geometrical shapes without stable parallel lines, like the landscape that surrounds it. Fragmented architecture where the geometric part of large oblique lines still allows a large formal union. Partly based in the geometric basis of the concept which dictates each project component, a sort of unwritten contract between architect and client. The modification of each element having a direct influence on the others, we can't enlarge or reduce a block in height and plan without enlarging or reducing other areas of the house. This geometry which is both fragmented and linear makes the project a strong spatial experience, allowing direct and variable contact with the landscape. It is this angular part, made of dark and raw materials that unites the house to nature, like a rock that emerges from the ground. A forgotten shipwreck at the heart of the forest.....more