Named for its dramatic cantilevered roof, this British Columbia home has been designed by McLeod Bovell for a West Vancouver family. The new house is spread out across three levels and over 8,000 sq ft. The L-shaped plan is tucked into the hillside at a point where a residential neighbourhood gives way to a steep, undeveloped forested ravine. It’s an excellent vantage point, offering views of the Vancouver skyline as well as English Bay in the distance, and the Stanley Park Peninsula to the south-east.
A dramatic British Columbia home
The house’s form was partly determined by zoning laws and local design guidelines that encouraged ‘roof forms.’ The main floor houses the kitchen, dining and living spaces, along with a family room and direct access to the deck with its far-reaching views. There’s also a small pool and an outdoor fireplace.
This level sits below the two broad eves that reach out and provide shelter and give the house its form and name. Almost concealed beneath this artificial ‘ground’ floor is a basement level. Here there’s parking and servicing, along with a guest suite, gymnasium, games room and home cinema.
The upper floor stretches the length of the site, with three separate decks, including a garden deck and a balcony for the primary bedroom suite. Three additional bedroom suites can be found here, tucked beneath the upper eaves. The interior spaces are defined by large unbroken planes of materials, whether concrete, glass, timber or marble.
The designers describe the house as providing an ‘unfolding cinematic experience’ for the clients, who see different vistas as they move between each level. From street level, it’s hard to determine the arrangement of the interior volume, and the house appears instead as ‘a pair of floating planes.’
Lisa Bovell and Matt McLeod’s practice is based in Vancouver. With 15 years’ worth of bespoke residential design in their portfolio, their work has given them plenty of experience working on awkward plots, where the desire to deliver a stunning view is balanced with the often prosaic and unpromising nature of the site. ‘Creating unusual relationships at different scales of living connects the houses to their surroundings,’ they explain.
The Eaves House encapsulates these relationships, and the way a site can be transformed by unconventional approaches to creating and framing the great outdoors.
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