Ridge House

Tucked between an open field and the forest’s edge, Ridge House straddles a gentle gradient, offering a deeply contextual response to topography that sublimates the architecture to the land.

Project
Description

Ridge House is a composed and cogent response to a declivity on the property that uses topography to embed the home directly in the landscape. With a preference for monochromatism, natural materials, and a distinctive sloping roof, our clients sought a tranquil home that blurs inside and outside. Inspired by the ridge itself and running parallel to it, the oversized roof behaves like an extension of the terrain. The result: a landform-based design that obscures the east side of the home from the road while bringing the home’s west side into direct contact with nature. 

Designed to prioritize passive design strategies and four-season intimacy with the outdoors, Ridge House is both open to and protected from the elements by virtue of its siting. Deep-set overhangs shield the floor-to-ceiling glazing on the east and west elevations, mitigating solar gain in the warmer months and letting the lower winter sun’s rays penetrate the home during the colder ones. Operable glass accordion doors on the west side enable powerful passive ventilation, significantly reducing the need for air conditioning in the summer, and create protected mid-door spaces from which to enjoy the outdoors comfortably.

Not only did we design with the land, we also found imaginative ways to bring it inside and connect the interior experience to the rhythms of nature. The principal bathroom looks out onto an internal courtyard located beneath an aperture within the cleft roof structure that opens skyward. This private garden is concealed by thin wood slats on both façades, which, together with the aperture, create a sense of airiness and filter light into the heart of the program. Strategically placed skylights bounce daylight off the vaulted ceilings and adjacent walls, casting diffuse illumination across the home and creating a sundial effect that allows our clients to track the sun’s position throughout the day. A firepit on the home’s southwest corner sits under a vaulted plywood ceiling while the grey we used inside the kitchen extends the grey exterior cladding on the piers, bringing the outside in.  

The program, which unfolds across one floor, includes a living room, dining room, and principal bedroom and bathroom; a guest wing with a TV room, gym, and garage; and covered outdoor spaces along the porch. The high-efficiency zoned in-floor radiant heating in the home’s communal spaces enables targeted and effective temperature control while the cold-climate heat pump, combined with Ontario’s clean energy grid, minimizes carbon consumption for heating and cooling. The Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) mechanical system optimizes air quality by bringing in fresh air while simultaneously enhancing thermal comfort.

Images: doublespace photography

Project
Information

Type
Residential
Location
Grey County, ON
Client
Private
Year
2023
Size
3,175 sf
Team
Kieffer Structural Engineering (Structural), Fire House HVAC Designs Inc. (Mechanical), J.W. Gordon Custom Builders Inc. (Contractor), Saraga Taylor Landscape Architects (Landscape), Terraprobe Consulting Geotechnical & Environmental Engineering (Geothermal), Dark Tools (Lighting), Coates Creek Cabinetry (Millwork)

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