Minimalist steel cabin floats above a rugged slope in Quebec

After you’ve purchased a beautiful plot of land, the last thing you’d want to do is spoil the views with an incongruous house.

Architecture firm Naturehumaine achieved a harmonious balance between architecture and landscape with the Bolton Residence, a minimalist country home that overlooks Quebec’s rugged mountain environment. The house comprises two stacked parts: a concrete-and-wood plinth below a cantilevered steel-clad structure that’s raised in the air to create the illusion of it floating above the wooded landscape.

Located in the Eastern Townships, the Bolton Residence is built on a natural plateau just below the highest point on the site. Its minimalist gabled form is a contemporary twist on the local vernacular architecture that mostly includes steel and wooden barns with gabled roofs. To minimize the 72-square-meter home’s environmental footprint, Naturehumaine built the structure with a timber frame and clad it with locally sourced materials, from the exterior fiber-cement panels to the interior Douglas fir plywood ceiling planks. The home is cooled with passive ventilation in summer and heated with a central, slow-combustion fireplace in winter.

The concrete and wood-clad ground floor contains the garage, storage, a secondary bedroom with a bathroom, and the mechanical room. The cantilevered upper volumes comprises the master bedroom, a terrace, and most of the living spaces, including the kitchen, living room, and dining room arranged in an open-plan layout. The Bolton Residence includes long horizontal strips of glazing installed to maximize views of Mount Orford and the valley below.