Messenger II sits on a drumlin ridge and commands a panoramic view to the southwest over the ruins of a four hundred-year-old agrarian settlement. Beyond are the LaHave River Estuary and the LaHave Islands. The simple wedge-like shape of the house is scribed into the curvature of the drumlin. In its radically monolithic shape it is related to the irreducible forms of surrounding vernacular models.

The procession through the landscape to the house is indirect; the dramatic landscape view is withheld until one enters the covered porch that separates the main house from the adjacent guest house. The northeast façade of the primary residence is solid and severe. The southwest façade is almost completely glazed; it runs parallel to a historic ridge road used for hauling sea-manure.

Messenger House II is an essay on traditional building practices that developed in response to the weather and weathering. Due to Nova Scotia’s labile climate, with its frequent freeze/thaw and wet/dry cycles, we have come to see building skins as alive and constantly moving. Eastern white cedar shingled wrapper of this house with its woven corners gives an impression of taut ‘shrinkwrapped’ architecture. It utilizes sliding barn doors to protect both the interior and the courtyard from sun and wind.

The structure of the house is an expression of contemporary, conventional North American platform framing. Not only is the floor the staging area for tilting up the walls but the section is identical to the plan; the floor is an exact template for the walls. The fabric of construction is delaminated to explain its thin-skinned nature on the northeast façade, in the courtyard. It has a 70’ longitudinal braced stud wall that bisects the interior; a didactic, tectonic device, it separates the house into what Louis Kahn described as ‘served’ and ‘servant’ zones. It also gives the seven-bay public area of the house a lantern-like cornice. A pair of transverse shear walls that book-end the plan sheltering sleeping spaces beyond.