Loftylovin

Geometry in blue

The architectural landscape of the Magdalen Islands is characterized by what are often small, lively colored wood structures in the open wind-swept area. The buildings are simple and rarely massive: properties are often a cluster of separate buildings.

The idea of this project was to expand and transform an existing house to create a true holiday home.

Instead of expanding the existing structure, a second, distinct, autonomous building, the private domain of the owners. The existing house was transformed into a common area and the new building reserved for the owners. The result: two sister houses in chalk-like blue, an attempt to capture a childhood drawing, the outside in cedar shingles, and the all-white inside boarded in pine.

The overhead cedar walkway joins the existing structure to the new building. This corridor is like an arrow which obliquely crosses both houses, starting as the entrance to the existing building and continuing as an overhead walkway joining the two blue structures. This overhead walkway has a dual purpose: its length is such as to insure privacy in each of the two houses and its angle transforms the walkway into a wind-breaking shield.

The project is an attempt to capture images of the Madgalen Islands, to overlap on a form of art naïf by transforming the Islands’ original architecture and to create something both familiar and destabilizing.

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Prize of Excellence
Residential Architecture category
Ordre des architectes du Québec

YH2 Architecture