Month: June 2024

A Family Retreat in Rural Ontario. This home’s clients live abroad but sought a Canadian homestead for their large family and guests. During summer and winter holidays, the parents wanted their children immersed in an Ontario landscape like the one in which they were raised. They asked for a generous home to allow young teenagers, extended family (and large dogs) to be comfortable in a remote area for long stays, and that would encourage activities like hiking and snowshoeing. Historically, the Canadian identity has been defined by our relationship to the land. Fulfilling the client’s mandate, the home honors that emotional connection through visual and material harmonization with its surroundings, but moreover, through responsible material sourcing and site adaptation, as well as energy-saving systems. A key contribution of the project to the area is that it preserves almost the entirety of the landscape that it occupies: an existing rocky area overlooking a wildflower meadow, which avoided cutting trees. Almost all of the natural habitat of the 100-acre property was preserved, including its wetlands.

A Family Retreat in Rural Ontario. This home’s clients live abroad but sought a Canadian homestead for their large family and guests. During summer and winter holidays, the parents wanted their children immersed in an Ontario landscape like the one in which they were raised. They asked for a generous home to allow young teenagers, extended family (and large dogs) to be comfortable in a remote area for long stays, and that would encourage activities like hiking and snowshoeing. Historically, the Canadian identity has been defined by our relationship to the land. Fulfilling the client’s mandate, the home honors that emotional connection through visual and material harmonization with its surroundings, but moreover, through responsible material sourcing and site adaptation, as well as energy-saving systems. A key contribution of the project to the area is that it preserves almost the entirety of the landscape that it occupies: an existing rocky area overlooking a wildflower meadow, which avoided cutting trees. Almost all of the natural habitat of the 100-acre property was preserved, including its wetlands.

Space and time, in the physical conception, are interdependent and inseparable forces. In architecture, this relationship is also symbiotic, as one cannot speak of architectural space without considering the various ways of perceiving and dealing with time. The design of Casa João e Maria starts from this premise, as the place of the residence, designed for a couple, is the same one where the owner was born and spent childhood with her parents, João and Maria. Therefore, the project sought to blend past and present, viewing time not as linear, but as a tangle of memories, moments and points of perception. This non-linearity is reflected in the space, appropriating the idea of multiple pathways by placing the circulation core in the center of the site, amidst the main courtyard of the house.

The Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) at the College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology has announced the shortlist of 53 Outstanding projects. The 5th cycle of awards celebrates built works completed in North, Central, and South America in 2022 and 2023, striving to bring visibility to those projects that best address the demands of our time and work towards building resilient communities.

framed by large blocks of sawn local granite, the house, overlooking a stream slicing the mountains, represents reconciliation with nature.
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