Ridge House

Tucked between an open field and the forest’s edge, Ridge House straddles a gentle gradient, offering a deeply contextual response to topography that sublimates the architecture to the land. The house leverages landform to optimize privacy and orient views while the sculptural roof — at once the home’s most defining and deferential feature — behaves like an extension of the terrain. Our clients desired a tranquil home that blurs inside and outside, with an explicit preference for monochromatism, natural materials, and a sloping roof. We devised a siting strategy that worked 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 prioritizing visual and physical connections to the tree and pine forest at the back of the home. Nestled into the declivity, the oversized roof is visible along the field’s horizon while the front façade remains concealed from the main road. The roof also provides both functional and passive-first advantages: deep-set overhangs mitigate solar gain and enhance mid-door comfort by providing shelter across the west façade. Operable triple-glazed accordion doors, with retractable insect screens, enable powerful passive ventilation and open to a cantilevered walkway designed to emphasize the property’s soft pitch. Nestling the house between the ridge and the forest also helps provide shelter from strong winds and brings the house closer to the cooling effects of the woods. We eliminated a basement from the design in light of the high water table, which also decreased the project’s overall reliance on concrete. Not only did we design with the land, we also found imaginative ways to bring nature and its rhythms into the interior experience. The principal bathroom looks out onto the enclosed garden space — the open secret that sits at the heart of the home under a cleft in the roof that enables additional light to filter obliquely into the program. Strategically staggered skylights bounce daylight off the vaulted ceilings and adjacent walls in the living and dining rooms to cast diffuse illumination across the home. A firepit on the home’s southwest corner sits under a vaulted plywood ceiling while the soft grey of the kitchen extends the grey exterior cladding on the piers, bringing the outside in. The high-efficiency zoned in-floor radiant heating in the home’s communal spaces enables targeted and effective temperature control while the cold-climate heat pump, combined with Ontario’s clean energy grid, minimizes carbon consumption for heating and cooling. The Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) mechanical system optimizes air quality by bringing in fresh air while simultaneously enhancing thermal comfort. Built to withstand the rural Ontario elements, Ridge House was designed with durability as a chief priority. 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 absorbs light and protects against scratches, mould, and stains, the home is a robust, low-maintenance architectural structure that was built to last — and perform — for the long-term.