Salt Spring Island House

The house sits upon a secluded five acre site on Salt Spring Island off the coast of British Columbia, nestled among mature trees and sitting atop a rocky moss covered slope.

The 1,700 square foot home is designed around the client’s significant art collection and a carefully tailored minimalist aesthetic. The dark bronze corrugated metal exterior minimizes the visual impact of the building in its environment, concealing pristine white museum-quality volumes within. The house is sited on the cardinal points maximizing passive solar gain. Due to the sloping site, the house is built on both a slab on grade and columns anchored in to the rock to avoid blasting and costly foundation work. The garage outbuilding houses main utilities and heated storage.

The approach to the house is from the north, arriving at a low covered area as an inside/outside buffer zone. The two wings of the house span to the west and south connected by a glass eight foot high entrance way. The west wing with twelve-foot ceilings houses the kitchen, living and dining areas while the south wing with ten-foot ceilings is the master bedroom suite and office/guest bedroom. Exterior decks create outdoor living space off both wings.

Spaces within the house always maintain connections to the outside. The single story, radiant heated floor plan is designed around the ten inch wide dimension of Dinesen Douglas fir floorboards. The boards are continuous, the longest length being forty feet. The client did not want base boards so the wall detail allows the boards to expand and contract within the shadow gap. The modest size of the home is expanded by large glass windows that frame specific views to the surrounding environment as living organic art.