Tour this Nova Scotia house in the rugged Canadian landscape

view of East River Residence, a delicate Nova Scotia house made of glazing and timber and open to rugged landscape vistas — (Image credit: Felix Michaud)

Destined for a couple seeking a life immersed in nature, this Nova Scotia house was conceived to embrace its surroundings. East River Residence, designed by architect Omar Gandhi on the region's rugged shoreline, brings together minimalist architecture and views of its wild and wonderful environment.

Step inside this minimalist Nova Scotia house

The design is linear and perched on a rocky outcrop, facing a forest on its landward side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. Large windows take in the views and bring nature inside, forging strong connections between architecture and its context.

The architecture team explain: 'On the first visit to the property, we followed the coastline before turning inward through a dense stand of forest, arriving at a soft valley held between two steep, rocky inclines. This natural topography became the foundation of the architectural response.'

Bridging two elevated banks and, at the same time, ensuring it touches lightly on its site, the structure is elevated on slender steel stilts. Metal also appears on the home's gable cladding, while the walls below are wrapped in cedar wood.

The home's more social and meditative spaces – the flowing, open-plan living room and the yoga studio – feature the largest openings, framing the long views. Elsewhere, in the bedrooms, which are enveloped in timber, a cosier, cocooning atmosphere prevails.

The connections with the outdoors and the intention that the house be at one with its environs are underlined by landscaping that includes carefully carved terraces and patios along the building’s façade.

Gandhi concludes: 'East River Residence is a home suspended within landscape – a quiet settlement on the coast that listens to the land, the weather, and the shifting horizon.'

omargandhi.com

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Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture & Environment Director at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018), Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020) and House London (2022).