Ridge House | 2024

Tucked between a field and the forest’s edge, Ridge House straddles a gentle gradient, offering a deeply contextual response to topography that dissolves the architecture into the land. The siting maximizes privacy and frames views while the sculptural roof — the home’s most defining and deferential feature — behaves like an extension of the terrain.

Designed to prioritize our clients’ desire to be immersed in nature across seasons, Ridge House is both open to and protected from the elements through its orientation and expansive roof. Our clients spent several years exploring and understanding the property’s ecosystems and wildlife before hiring our practice to design their home. They acquainted themselves with the deer, foxes, and birds that live in the forest and created low-impact walking trails in the woods.

Our siting strategy leads with the land, honours its biodiversity, and works with the property’s constraints — a naturally occurring downslope, a high water table, and a prominent ironwood tree — to embed the house in its surroundings while strengthening visual and physical connections to the ironwood and pine forest at the edge of the clearing. Positioning the house between the ridge and the woods protects it from strong winds while bringing it closer to the cooling effects of the forest. The large, sloping roof floats above the field’s horizon while the front façade remains concealed from the main road.

The project prioritizes passive-first strategies as well as high-performance materials and systems. From roof to foundation, the building envelope is designed for airtight thermal performance. Deep-set overhangs shield the floor-to-ceiling triple glazing on the east and west elevations, mitigating solar gain in the warmer months while allowing the lower winter sun to penetrate deeper into the home during the colder months.

Glass accordion doors on the west façade work in concert with retractable insect screens to create protected threshold spaces from which to enjoy the outdoors comfortably, even during bug season. These fully operable doors, which enable powerful passive ventilation and significantly reduce the need for air conditioning in the summer, open out to a cantilevered walkway that emphasizes the property’s soft pitch.

We eliminated a basement from the design in light of the high water table, which also decreased the project’s overall reliance on concrete.

Our clients desired a tranquil home that blurs inside and outside, with an explicit preference for monochromatism, matte finishes, and natural materials. Not only did we design with the land, but we also found imaginative ways to bring nature and its rhythms into the interior experience. Concealed by slatted wood screens, a secret garden sits under the roof’s large rectangular cleft, filtering light and bringing the outdoors directly into the heart of the home.

Strategically staggered skylights bounce daylight off the vaulted ceilings, casting diffuse illumination across the communal spaces. A sheltered firepit on the home’s southwest corner sits under a pitched plywood ceiling to promote outdoor comfort across seasons, while the soft grey of the kitchen extends the grey exterior cladding on the piers.

Ridge House was built to withstand the rural Ontario elements. We selected materials for their aesthetic coherence and hard-wearing durability. From the standing seam roof and exterior siding to the marine-grade plywood and prefabricated millwork stained with a low-VOC, water-based coating that protects against scratches, mould, and stains, the home is a robust, low-maintenance structure designed to last — and perform — long-term.

High-efficiency zoned in-floor radiant heating provides targeted temperature control, while the cold-climate heat pump, combined with Ontario’s clean energy grid, minimizes carbon emissions for heating and cooling. The Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) optimizes air quality by drawing in fresh air while enhancing thermal comfort year-round.

Category:Private HomesYear:2024Location:Ontario, CanadaArchitects:Superkül Inc.Landscape Architects:Saraga Taylor Landscape Architects Design Team: Meg Graham, Connar Walik, Kevin James, Ben Salance, and Janean Brühn General Contractor:J.W. Gordon Custom Builders Client: PrivatePhotographer: Doublespace Photography