Château de cartes

Finalist, Prize of Excellence
Ordre des architectes du Québec, 2007
Residential category

Finalist, Institute of Design Montréal Award, 2007
Architecture category

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Built in the woods in Austin, in the Eastern Townships, this country house was designed on the principle of a house of cards: a simple, light structure composed of a multitude of “cards,” or equal-sized panels.

The project, inspired by the vernacular architecture of the Eastern Townships, is original for combining these traditional forms and the atypically scaled cladding composed of clinker-built thin cement panels, measuring 1 x 80 x 120 cm.

This innovative cladding (economical, environmentally friendly, rot-proof, and maintenance-free) gives the project its poetic nature, beyond the domestic scale, both fragile and solid, heavy and light.

Built perpendicular to the slope of the terrain and taking advantage of the change in altitude, the project falls away in successive levels, all topped by a single roof:

• From the level of the access road and garage

• To the intermediary level created by the swimming pool and its partially covered terrace

• To the main building, which has views of the mountainous landscape on all three levels

This house, designed as a vacation home, offers its occupants large interior spaces open to nature and exterior spaces that are covered for protection from the hot sun and the rain.