Located at the edge of Lake on the Mountain in Prince Edward County, Triptych House was designed to complement two existing buildings — an older brick house and a garage — on the property. We adopted an aggregate approach to create a domestic campus populated by multiple gabled structures, honouring the agrarian vernacular of Prince Edward County. 

In response to the clients’ desire for discrete, purpose-driven zones, the three volumes house a tripartite domestic program. The west wing hosts the principal sleeping quarters, while the central two-storey structure features communal spaces on the main floor and additional bedrooms on the second level. A home office on the east side doubles as a library and secluded space for thinking and writing. This ground-floor strategy anticipates the clients’ plan to eventually make this second home their primary residence, where they can retire and age comfortably in place. 

The glazed walkways choreograph a narrative procession, using negative space to delineate and connect the volumes while providing uninterrupted views through the property to the lake. The architectural forms and exterior finishes create a strong datum that accentuates the home’s relationship to its natural surroundings. Whereas the horizontal prefinished cedar slats on the north side hug down toward the landscape, the negative spaces created by the glass links and clean rooflines, along with the vertical pattern of the standing seam metal roof, create a distinct silhouette against the Prince Edward County sky. 

The cedar cladding, which stretches across the front façade, offers more privacy on the north-facing elevation. In keeping with passive-first design principles, we kept glazing to a minimum on this side of the home, save for a large dormer that bathes the second-floor bedrooms in daylight, while full-height operable glazing at the rear enables powerful passive ventilation. Sitting under a deep overhang that mitigates solar gain in summer and lets the sun’s low rays penetrate in winter, a set of sliding glass doors allow the living room and kitchen to spill out onto the patio. The landscape design reinforces a passive-first strategy: newly planted deciduous trees along the edge of the patio will provide increased shade during the summer but let sunlight through in the winter. 

The blurring of indoors and outdoors is also accomplished through the deliberate yet subtle use of materials. We used the same stone for both the footpath leading up to the main entrance and the foyer floor, effectively pulling the path and, by extension, the outdoors in. Located across from the front door is a stairwell whose custom design turns an otherwise utilitarian architectural element into an aesthetic and practical organizing principle. Designed to elevate the entrance procession, the stair emphasizes the double-height space in this part of the house and provides a spatial partition between different zones on the main floor while also guiding the eye towards the lake. The folded edge of the white-painted steel guard peels back to reveal the white-oak risers and handrail — a gesture that opens up the stair to the rest of the floor, turning the first few steps into an invitation and imbuing the hard material with an unexpectedly soft mien. 

Featuring high-quality, hardwearing materials, a high-performance building envelope whose assembly and air-tightness exceed code requirements, and an in-floor radiant system, Triptych House is a durable and poetic rural refuge designed to maximize thermal efficiency, minimize energy use, and provide long-term joy and ease.

Images: doublespace photography