This 3500 sf house sits on a topographically varied site overlooking the mouth of the arm in the southern part of Halifax in Nova Scotia. The site is steeply sloped running to the water with large houses on either side, in an area of the city where shortly after the turn of the last century cottages were a common sight along the water’s edge. The clients for the project are a young family whose program included creating a discreet building that included semi-private outdoor green space that would be safe for children to play, as well as a clear separation of public and private functions of the project. The desire for discretion and the trend of over-building on medium sized lots suggested a more restrained formal strategy, showing less instead of more from the street.

The architectural response was to place a formally modest pavilion - that houses the public functions of the household - on a large plinth. This fundamental form houses the private domain that simultaneously mediates the significant slope of the site, and also provides clear formal and programmatic hierarchy for the project. The resulting scheme includes a simple garage that helps to create an aperture separating the entrance court from the generous south courtyard that sits atop the plinth roof.

The materiality consists of a steel primary frame that facilitates ultimate flexibility for glazing at the main level and employs glue-lam beams for the all wood roof that covers the main living space. The roof is clad with standing seam metal over rigid insulation allowing the interior finish of the ceiling to be the wood sheathing reinforcing the pavilion aesthetic of the main building. A black on black envelope accomplishes a subtlety appropriate to a project that balances restraint and grandness.

The project takes advantage of the location next to the ocean by using geothermal heating technology by running the piping infrastructure of the heating system into the ocean. This pre-tempers the water that is then run through a heat pump where the stable temperature of the ocean is then raised efficiently to desired heating temperatures.

The site has been sensitively approached by maintaining a significant portion of the building footprint as an outdoor green space above the private cellular space of the plinth. The use of a combination of materials produced in the region including eastern white shingles cedar shingles and shiplap cedar boards contributes significantly to minimize the environmental footprint of the project. The life of the envelope is extended by a non-toxic black stain.