Trail’s Edge is a monumental new family home: a British Columbia house that conceals its substantial size through its immersive relationship with its natural surroundings in a wooded plot in Whistler.
Openspace Architecture designs this British Columbia house
Designed by North Vancouver’s Openspace Architecture, a practice founded in 1998 by Don Gurney and Eric Pettit, the new house is one of a series of spectacular residences the studio has built in the Pacific Northwest.
At 8,200 sq ft, the house occupies the southern part of a wedge-shaped plot south of Whistler Creek. The plan is tapered to follow the property line, with floor-to-ceiling glass looking out onto the trees and a relatively obscured and sober façade facing the public road, cloaking what is within.
The relationship with nature is emphasised by the decks that wrap around the forest façade. They are covered by a prow-like roof that sails off into the trees, and are supported by a row of tall steel columns that evoke the region’s arrow-straight cedar and pine trees. The lower deck wraps around the house and includes a hot tub and a fire pit, while the upper deck level is a more private space accessed from the principal bedroom suite.
Throughout the project, the architects have used chunky basalt stone cladding to define key areas of the interior and exterior, which contrast with the fine joinery used throughout for floors, ceiling, cabinetry and key pieces of furniture.
The architects describe this blend of solidity and openness as a way of achieving ‘the psychological comforts of shelter’. The interior is similarly subdivided, with thin wooden slat screens serving as partitions between the fluid series of main living rooms, which circulate around the main hallway.
These include a living and dining room, a family room, games room and office, with a downstairs guest suite and a dedicated space for ski storage and changing.
Upstairs there are five more ensuite bedrooms, with a double-height stairwell that rises up above the main entrance hall. The architects write that the ‘architecture immerses its inhabitants into the site's environment and offers a calming remedy to the cacophony of urban life’.
-
‘I tried to be open-minded’: is Rankin a natural cruise-ship photographer?Rankin’s photographs from a week spent cruising will be on show at London's Battersea Power Station, from 17 September
-
A true super saloon in look, feel and power, the Lotus Emeya is an EV to savourThe Emeya manages to punch high above its hefty weight, offering a genuine alternative to German equivalents with a style that’s all of its own
-
This perfectly-compact sauna blends the best of Scandinavian and Japanese expertiseThe Kupu Sauna from Maruni merges exquisite craftsmanship with a celebration of Japanese and Finnish bathing cultures
-
La Maison de la Baie de l’Ours melds modernism into the shores of a Québécois lakeACDF Architecture’s grand family retreat in Quebec offers a series of flowing living spaces and private bedrooms beneath a monumental wooden roof
-
Peel back maple branches to reveal this cosy midcentury Vancouver gemOsler House, a midcentury Vancouver home, has been refreshed by Scott & Scott Architects, who wanted to pay tribute to the building's 20th-century modernist roots
-
A spectacular waterside house in Canada results from a radical overhaulSplyce Design’s Shoreline House occupies an idyllic site in British Columbia. Refurbished and updated, the structure has been transformed into a waterside retreat
-
Hilborn House, one of Arthur Erickson’s few residential projects, is now on the marketThe home, first sketched on an envelope at Montreal Airport, feels like a museum of modernist shapes, natural materials and indoor-outdoor living
-
This Canadian house is a precise domestic composition perched on the Nova Scotian coastBishop McDowell completed a new Canadian house overlooking the Atlantic, using minimal details and traditional forms to create a refined family home
-
In Canada, The Nest is a three-dimensional puzzle redefining remote livingOn a wooded site on the country’s West Coast, this prefabricated retreat designed by Daria Sheina Studio is a nurturing space for low-impact living
-
Discover Canadian modernist Daniel Evan White’s pitch-perfect homesCanadian architect Daniel Evan White (1933-2012) had a gift for using the landscape to create extraordinary homes; revisit his story in an article from the Wallpaper* archives (first published in 2011)
-
A new Québec house blends open-plan living with far-reaching viewsThe Mountainside Residence is anchored into its sloping site by a concrete plinth, above which sits a main living space with tall ceilings and walls of glass
