As its name implies, the Hill House is as much building as landscape. Extruded from its bald drumlin hilltop site, the house is a landform, with its pair of monopitch roofs complementing the curvature of the hill in section. In plan, the house’s midline is on a north/south axis, while the drumlin is on a northwest axis. It knits itself into the cultural landscape by sliding in between a series of parallel agricultural plough ridges, or terraces.

Like many of our other houses, Hill House is primarily a landscape-viewing device. Like a camera, it frames 360-degree views of the natural and cultural landscapes for a landscape photographer client. This house commands the ultimate sense of ‘prospect’, audaciously occupying its hilltop like a panopticon. This desire for outlook, however, brings with it the reciprocal need for ‘refuge’ on a windswept site, which receives the brunt of vicious North Atlantic storms. These two imperatives are resolved through the use of a microclimate-making courtyard typology inspired by Neolithic Celtic hill forts. Two long, pinwheeling concrete walls create a protected garden. Both the house and the barn turn their rumps outward against the wind, while their glazed ‘bites’ face one another across the courtyard. The relationship between the two structures ironically creates a view outward, by looking inward across the courtyard.

Both in terms of landscape and a preoccupation with this material culture, the Hill House is a logical extension of a continuous line of research that has led to a coherent body of work. It follows the ‘space between’ focus found in the ‘House on the Nova Scotia Coast No. 22’, and it aggressively pushes the monolithic tectonic strategy of Messenger House II with its zero-detailing. A plain, rough-weather wrapper of eastern cedar shingles and local hemlock gives way on the interior to a warm, lantern like quality.