The Bras d’Or Lake House overlooks the UNESCO BiosphereLake in Cape Breton and is set below the road and tucked into a steep, ruggedterrain with dense tree coverage.

The topographies’ unique challenges led to a site-ledstrategy: a landscape game descending off the road towards the water in asequence while maximizing views. The main house sits parallel to the contoursand shoreline and maintains a prospect along the length of the house. Thesecondary unit acts as a threshold – the first point of arrival- and is rotatedperpendicular to the main house to mediate the quick change in grade whileallowing ground level access to both the guest suite and the garage below

The two buildings form a courtyard, framed by a boardform concrete retaining wall that holds the outdoor kitchen. Maintaining avisibility axis from the courtyard through the living space of the main house,towards the water, was critical to the scheme and forms a continuousindoor/outdoor room. The one-bedroom house has an open living space around acentral core with living, kitchen and dining on one side and the primarybedroom on the other with an upper-level bonus room and office loft. On eitherend of the 82-foot house, there are two ‘jewel-boxes’ that are lined in cedarshiplap. One of these gems houses the inglenook fireplace, adjacent to thedouble height living space. The other is the spa off the primary bedroom andcradles an intimate view to the lake from a corner sunken tub. The central corehouses all the service spaces- the kitchen, laundry, stair, and washroom- andis the third gem, also clad in cedar, with everything cut into it as whitemillwork. The jewel boxes are the solid nooks at the gable ends, each with a“bite” or void that become covered outdoor spaces, one public and one private.

The guest suite above the garage is its own gem, lined in cedar shiplap with its own wood stove. Suspended up in the trees, it simultaneously shields views of the main house and frames a glimpse to the water that slips past the other form without interruption.

Keeping with the Bras d’Or Lakes’ identity as harmonizing between what is natural and what is built, the cedar-shingled house is muted among the birch trees and quite hidden when viewed from the water, despite the change in elevation.

“No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together, each the happier for the other” – Frank Llyod Wright, 1932

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