Modern House On A Hill slope | Laurentian Ski Chalet | Saint Donat | Quebec | Canada | Robitaille Curtis

This modern ski chalet was designed as a weekend retreat for a family with school age children. Sited on the steep slope of a former ski hill, Mont-Jasper, near the village of Saint-Donat. At an elevation of 2,435 feet above sea level, the site is among the highest residential building lots in the Laurentians and Lanaudière regions. From this elevation, surrounded by a dense forest of spruce, maple, beech and birch trees, the chalet commands 100-mile panoramic views over beautiful Lac Archambault..........more

Farmhouse Re-modelling | Knowlton Residence | Quebec | TBA

Located in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, Knowlton Residence contrasts simple forms with vernacular materials to update an aging country farmhouse. In response to the client’s desire to enlarge and covert the existing country house into their primary residence, the gable roofed structure has been completely renovated with a new two storey extension built upon the foundations of a previous single storey addition. Going up instead of spreading out allowed for more space and better views without the need to excavate across the hilltop. The box shaped extension plays off the familiar farmhouse typology, creating a series of intriguing contrasts between the thisness and thatness of the composition, both distinguishing and uniting different eras, forms, and materials.....more

Canadian Modern House | The Clear Lake Cottage | Canada | MJMA

A Toronto family of five requested a cottage that is ‘modern and open’ but retains a quintessential ‘cottage feel’. The building was to be commodious and accommodate extended family but should avoid ostentation in scale and modernity.

The Clear Lake Cottage proposes a simple tent-like envelope to house both program and outdoor spaces under a single vernacular form. A singular roof presents a child-like impression of house; rectilinear and ordered in symmetry while playfully skewed in volume. Nestled within a forest, the building is sculpted and stepped to take advantage of the land; modeling the natural grade. Open and closed faces respond to shoreline views or quiet wooded depths. Like a tent the porosity of the building’s envelope strengthens the experience of ‘cottage’.

Three volumes: a communal space, a bedroom bar, and a master suite are registered in response to the site to achieve views, separation, and privacy. The roof peak creates a sleeping loft, and enhances the communal space. The plan aligns a series of large sliding windows for summer cross ventilation. The tent-like 'big top' of the Douglas Fir interior has three exterior spaces carved into it to create sheltered outdoor areas. The relationship to site, the transition spaces, and operable transparent skin connects to this privileged landscape.....more

Modern Ski Chalet | Laurentian Ski Chalet | Ontario | Canada | RobitailleCurtis Inc.

This modern ski chalet was designed as a weekend retreat for a family with school age children. Sited on the steep slope of a former ski hill, Mont-Jasper, near the village of Saint-Donat. At an elevation of 2,435 feet above sea level, the site is among the highest residential building lots in the Laurentians and Lanaudière regions. From this elevation, surrounded by a dense forest of spruce, maple, beech and birch trees, the chalet commands 100-mile panoramic views over beautiful Lac Archambault.

To maintain the natural topography of the steep mountainside and to minimizes the footprint of construction, the house was built on 8” x 8” western red cedar pilotis. Elevating the house allows snow and spring run-off to flow freely beneath the structure. In spring and summer, a forest floor of native ferns and moss extends uninterrupted beneath the structure......more

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

Year-Round Residence | Christie Beach, Ontario | Canada | Altius Architecture

Set on the south shore of Georgian Bay, this residence seeks to harmonize with its surrounding landscape with minimal environmental impact, while accommodating the diverse needs of four generations of occupants.
Integration with the site is achieved by setting the building low and shifting floor and roof planes so that it becomes embedded into the landscape.
As the elevations shift between the deck, loft, upper patio, green roof and floor levels, intimate moments are created as each space unfolds distinctly into the external environment.

The elevation of the reflecting pool is also set specifically to create an effect of seamlessly extending Georgian Bay to the house, blurring the lines between building and landscape Material choice is also significant in addressing the issues of site responsiveness, sustainability and for comfort.
The rich wood within the interior spaces bring warmth in winter while the rich red cedar and cherry woods intensify the vibrant green of the surrounding forest in summer.
The consistent palette of cedar soffits and ceiling cladding, window and doorframes seamlessly transition between the interior and exterior spaces.
The exterior Ipe naturally blends with the surrounding rock and soil, becoming a geometric topography that extends its contemporary aesthetic into the natural environment.
Flanked by hard edges on the east and west, the building maintains privacy from neighbours while emphasizing the views to the inner courtyard.
The organization of the building is broken down into zones; the main floor is divided between the public/living area and service while upstairs there are the two wings – one for the master suite and the other for the guest wing to accommodate extended family.
These spaces are unified by a central courtyard which acts as the hub of the house which gives access to all main spaces on the ground floor.....more

Cottage | Apsley, Haliburton Highlands East, Ontario | Canada | Altius Architecture

This project continues the Southern Ontario tradition of cottaging, while pushing the typology beyond one of occasional use into a year round dwelling.
The home immerses itself in the surroundings, drawing from the beauty of the entire site, in addition to the powerful focus of the lake.
Clean, modern spaces, rich in material and texture, in concert with a solid sustainable foundation results in enduring architecture.
The side-split massing integrates naturally into the site; conforming to a subtle shift in the underlying Canadian Shield and minimizing the overall presence of the building on the site.
The efficient steel and engineered wood structure allows a delicate glazed skin to wrap the main volume, emphasized by a simple roof plane that connects the main program elements.....more

Cliff House | Muskoka Lakes, Ontario | Canada | Altius Architecture

Set on a rock formation overlooking a spectacular lake, the Cliff House seeks to enhance the extraordinary surroundings through the thoughtful integration of building elements with the natural assets of the site and terrain.
The program called for intimate spaces carefully tuned to the unique views, light, and breezes of the site.
Self-sufficiency was a key client mandate and the project is completely off-grid. The dwelling emerges form the cliff and rests on a base crafted from local granite.
A tall central void acts as an anchor that circulates movement, light and air into living spaces that pinwheel and extend into the landscape.
Balancing the heavy mass of two interior fireplace cores; cantilevered volumes, flying roofs and floor-to-ceiling glass achieve a lightness of form and work to draw the lake into each interior space.
Finely crafted materials, including hand-hewn stonework, wood ceilings, and structural board-formed concrete walls, define the residence and celebrate the skilled contributions of all tradespeople involved.
Living lightly on the site was important to the owners and the architects were given a strong mandate for sustainability.
As a retreat for the family, the desire to become completely self-sufficient and independent from external infrastructure became critical to the design of this off-grid residence.
The design achieves this aim by combining passive and active systems.
Sustainable design in this case is not divorced from the experiential qualities of the dwelling but enhances the unification of building and landscape.
This design implements a passive gain and solar mass strategy that takes advantage of the sun’s daily passage and the movement of air in different seasons. In summer, solar shading limits heat gain while operable windows are orientated to take advantage of natural ventilation.
Operable windows in the vertical circulation space are create a stack effect to vent hot, stale air above and draw cool, fresh air in below.
Green roofs mediate temperatures and control runoff while connecting the building foreground with the distant landscape.
Optimized glazing and solar orientation in conjunction with the thermal mass of concrete slabs and stone walls forms the basis of the heating system.
A high performance envelope and super-insulated glass work to limit unfavorable heat loss and gains all year-round.
These passive strategies reduce energy loads and augment comfort so that the demands on active systems are minimized.
Two contra-flow masonry heaters (ultra clean burning) in the fireplace cores take full advantage of abundant biomass available on site for supplemental heat.
An array of evacuated tube solar collectors use the sun’s energy to heat water that circulates through 10 thermal storage tanks.
This massive store of energy supplies hydronic radiant floor heating and provides domestic hot water.
A series of photovoltaic panels and battery bank provide the building with electricity. Electrical loads have been carefully managed and are minimized through the use of energy efficient appliances and LED and compact fluorescent lighting.....more

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

Shaft House | Toronto Canada | Urbanscape Group

Shaft House is a new and innovative modern residential project that quickly garnered widespread interest in Toronto
—Home of The Week, Globe & Mail, August 2010.

Designed by Urbanscape Group partner Ali Malek-Zadeh and Reza Aliabadi—OAA of atelier rzlbd, Shaft House is a modern infill 2 ½ storey detached single family home. Shaft House is so called because the design revolves around a central skylight that opens to every level—flooding the home with natural sunlight—resulting a light and airy spacious feeling. The shaft of light coming from the southern exposure, cleverly divides the public and private areas of the house, with the northern side of the house reserved for bedrooms which employs a shading system on the street side of the residence to enhance privacy. The home can easily be configured for 2 or 3 bedrooms.....more

Ravine Residence | Toronto | Ontario | Canada | Hariri Pontarini Architects

11,600 sf

This residence employs two volumes with carefully choreographed openings that address the public street while maintaining the importance of domestic intimacy and privacy. The back of the house takes advantage of its ravine setting with a design of transparency that maximizes the natural light and provides natural landscape vistas. Employing a vocabulary of enduring materials of French limestone, roughcast stucco, and teak windows, the house underscores the client’s desire to create a generational home....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

Mosewich House | Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada | D'Arcy Jones Design Inc

This functional and inviting family house is perched on the edge of a steep slope in a suburban setting. Existing ponderosa pines, bunch-grass and sagebrush were carefully preserved by siting the house away from the street. A private, sunny courtyard merges the kitchen and dining areas with the landscape. Intimate views of vegetation and exposed rock are a welcome contrast to long views towards the river valley below. A robust, dark tinted stucco mass anchors the house to the ground, morphing as one continuous mass to create courtyard walls, terraces, fireplace chimneys and structural shear-walls. Opposite, yet never quite touching, is a muted stucco mass bending and wrapping asymmetrically to frame dramatic views. Interior spaces are defined by modulating the voids between these two contrasting stucco masses. When these stucco masses extend inside the house, the threshold is defined with floor-to-ceiling glass, translucent in some locations for privacy. Deep cantilevered overhangs provide both shade and upper level rock gardens. Carefully located operable windows provide effective cross-ventilation, eliminating reliance on air-conditioning. Double-height dining and living spaces separate upper level bedroom wings. This central spatial "sigh" is naturally lit from two directions, admitting light deep into the interior. Punctuating this open space is a sculptural maple and steel stair, connecting all three levels of the house.

Mirroring the formal language of the exterior, dissimilar interior materials never meet, separated by thin reveals. A refined exterior palette of smooth concrete, cement stucco, aluminum windows and red cedar is paired with an interior of white gypsum-board with maple and slate flooring; the theme of a two-tone stucco exterior is repeated inside by interlocking cherry and maple millwork. Built-in cherry ledges double as overflow seating and toy chests. From the interior, it is easy to forget you are in a conventional subdivision. Calm and simple, with moments of playfulness and subtlety, one surprising twist is a sound-proof recording studio hidden under the garage. One of the clients is a cover-band drummer on the side....more

Modern Home | 83 The Bridle Path, Toronto | Tas DesignBuild

Full Home Description:

18,000 Sf. Glass House Designed/Built By Tas; Modernism, Minimalistic Extravagance & Contemporary Styles; 'The Sensual Space' Explores Metal, Wood, Water, Fire & Earth. Alive, Dynamic With Sense Of Autonomy.

Extras:

10 Bathrooms, Piano-Curved Zinc And Glass Outside Wall, Clerestory Windows And Loft-Style Windows Thru-Out, 3 Distinct Components; Entry Pavilion, Family Tower And Public Wing; Central Courtyard; Basketball Court-combined-Theatre Room.

TAS Design Build, which makes something of a specialty of sprawling Bridle Path retreats, created this home giving it three distinct components; an entry pavillion, a family tower and a public wing. The house features and finishes explore aspects of metal, wood, water, fire and earth.

In Home Health Club

83 The Bridle Path is a home that has all the amenities of a modern health club.

This home has been described by the Toronto Star as perhaps the most technologically sophisticated residence in Canada click here to view a video showing some of these features.

The home has is own full sized indoor basketball court which can be quickly converted into a badminton or volleyball court. This private gymnasium also has a retractable movie screen and projector with surround sound speaker system to create your very own state of the art home theater.

The home also has a personal indoor gym, a steam room, indoor pool with the deck built from exotic wood, and a hot tub which is perfect after a long day of work.

The homes backyard features its own private tennis court with a great view of the house. The tennis court has its own outdoor lighting for day or evening use.

There is also a billiards room with a built in bar and a wood-burning fireplace made of cast iron.

The kitchen interiors at 83 The Bridle Path are designed by Boffi - Piero Lissoni

The faucets and handles throughout the home are froom Dornbracht

Home Data:

Address: 83 The Bridle Path
City: Toronto
State: n/a
Zip: M3C2P1
Neighborhood: The Bridle Path
Beds: 6
Baths: 10
Floors: 3
Year Built: 2006
Garage Size: 4 Car Garage
Square Feet: 18,000
Lot Size: Acres
Status: Active
Price: $12,900,000
More pictures of the home here