This retreat deep in the woods of Canada takes visitors on a playful journey

A wood-clad retreat hiding amid the fir and oak trees of a waterfront site in the Gulf Island archipelago of Canada’s Pacific Northwest appears to hover above a small gully filled with a carpet of bright ferns. It’s a magical setting for the latest architectural project of lighting wizard Omer Arbel, the co-founder of Bocci and the architect behind projects such as a house with lilypad-shaped concrete columns in rural Vancouver.

Inside Omer Arbel's new, wood-clad retreat design

Built for Josh Pekarsky and Marla Guralnick, 91.0 Bridge House is a 300 sq m home set perpendicular to the coast, offering incredible views of the water but also the surrounding rocks and trees. As its name suggests, it is designed as a suspended bridge between two naturally occurring rocky ridges, with a discreet entrance opening on a long central corridor resembling a path through the forest.

‘We organized the spaces of the house to be on one flat plane, with the idea that the occupants never go up and down; instead, the site topography goes up and down around them. You enter after walking through the forest, walking down the long storage corridor, explains Arbel. ‘You are not aware at first that the topography of the site has fallen away around you, and in fact you are now on a bridge… until you reach about midway through the floor plan.

At this point, visitors encounter a central triangular courtyard, punched through from top to bottom, opening the house to the tree canopy above and the ground below. ‘This gives you the awareness that you are suspended in a bridge over the fern gulley, and affords you a view up to the sky,’ says Arbel. ‘The entire roof drains to this triangular void, such that on a rainy day the expense of water becomes especially pronounced and visceral.’

‘It brings light and air into the space and reminds us that we’re suspended among the trees without a single step anywhere on the property,’ say Pekarsky and Guralnick, who were involved in the design process. ‘The house was a very personal moment of expression and vision for the owners, and it took many conversations to weave into an architecture that our studio felt comfortable about,’ says Arbel. ‘The process was lengthy but very rewarding.’

The house is organised in two wings, with the main one containing a kitchen, living room, utility spaces and suspended principal bedroom. A second wing, which can be opened or closed selectively for family or guests, provides two additional bedrooms and a bunk room.

‘The entire south wall of the house is considered as a storage wall – not just for things but also for people and activities,’ says Arbel. ‘Mini rooms, in the same language as the millwork, contain intimate activities.’ These include a reading nook, bunk beds with a hidden ladder, a breakfast nook and a bar. ‘The long entry volume is punctuated by a series of jewel box spaces,’ add Pekarsky and Guralnick. ‘The whole of it feels like a magical train car to an untouched coastline.’

Past the triangular courtyard, the experience and scenery changes dramatically, from the feeling of being suspended in the tree canopy, to landing on solid ground again. With floor-to-ceiling windows framing the west-facing beach and Pacific Ocean, the living space features a custom concrete fireplace insert, as well as Bocci’s ‘1.8’ walnut shelving and a branch-like ‘28.11 Armature’ chandelier. Throughout the house are many other Bocci designs, including the cast-glass hemispheres of the ‘14’ wall sconces, part of the iconic 14 series, the first design created by Arbel for the lighting brand.

Each of the main spaces of the house opens up to a corresponding outdoor room, so as to better highlight the site’s different micro-ecologies, which include the fern gully, a Gary oak grove and the rocky beach. From these outdoor spaces it is possible to admire not only the surrounding nature but the house’s façade, clad in heavy cedar blocks with a sandblasted finish.

‘Omer experimented with several approaches to the exterior cladding before we settled on sandblasted cedar that gives the house a timeless quality, as if the house has always been here among the trees,’ explains the clients.

‘Our region has a robust maritime shipping industry, which includes industrial-scale sandblasting typically used to clean up the hulls of ocean-faring ships,’ explains Arbel. ‘We used these methods to sandblast cedar, calibrating the abrasive such that the denser ridges of the grain pattern remain unaffected, with only the softer layers in between blasted away. The result is an almost geological formation with very high contrast shadows perfectible on the detail level.’

This makes the house almost disappear into the forest landscape, a coastal habitat that is due to be soon completely transformed by climate change. It is anticipated that over the next 100 years, rising sea levels will flood the fern gully, giving the project an entirely different reading and character.

‘I love imagining the fern gully flooded, a tidal pool basin, a century from now, with the house bridging above it. I think it is interesting to think about climate change simply as a phenomenon alongside other phenomena of any given site, rather than in apocalyptic terms,’ says Arbel. ‘Thus, we can respond to it poetically. In this case the topography, siting, and building section unfold in both the present, making a wonderful house… and also in the future, giving the project a completely different reading.’

For the owners, the house is ideal at present. ‘More than any particular space, it’s the materials and details that make the difference. The fir strip walls, walnut millwork and shelving, dark-stained cedar ceilings and practically no right angles anywhere add up to an intimate, organic and deeply personal space that is everything we wanted and nothing we could have imagined,’ they conclude.

omerarbel.com