[Project by ArqEstructura]
This house project is sited near the shores of Lake Ontario, Canada, in rural Prince Edward County. It is for a film producer who needs space for working at home, holding artistic workshops, entertaining, and accommodating visitors. The site has neighbors only to the sides; views out the front and back are entirely of fields and pastures extending as far as the eye can see. The site often receives strong winds that blow across Lake Ontario from the west, causing large snow dunes to accummulate in winter. An architectural form that protects from these winds as much as possible while capturing solar heat in non-summer months was therefore necessary.
The asymmetrically gabled house consists of a courtyard separating a garage from a residential volume, where a living room containing kitchen and dining is overlooked by a mezzanine with an office-library and a bedroom suite. Two guestrooms, an airlock, a hall, and a bathroom complete the ground floor. The living room can be converted into a workshop or meeting space by rearranging the furniture.
To maximize privacy and avoid disturbing next-door neighbours during events, views are orientated exclusively out the front and back of the house toward the pastures. The double-decker porch is designed to provide shade in summer but permit winter sun to penetrate the house. The construction is standard Canadian wood-frame clad entirely with corrugated galvanized steel to maximize cost-efficiency and acknowledge the agrarian setting.
Rafael Gómez-Moriana 