Pointe Au Baril, Ontario, Canada
Akb Architects designed this new cottage and bunkie for a client who enjoys dancing on the wind as he kite-surfs where the strong weather and sometimes harsh landscape define the visual language from which a community of modest cabins emerges.
Located in the northern Canadian landscape, Whistling Wind Island emerges from the vast open water off the east coast of Georgian Bay in Pointe Au Baril, Ontario.
The project has been recently awarded a 2024 Future House Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and Global Design News.
Inspired by the beauty of the archipelago, a collection of smaller scale buildings with asymmetrical rooflines sit upon a one acre island of exposed Precambrian bedrock.
The silhouette of the seemingly wind-swept rooflines set against the endless expanse of the sky reflects the context of the surrounding chain of islands that crop up through the continuous water surface, creating intermittent moments of pause along the horizon.
The main Cottage and Bunkie were built largely upon the footprint of the original buildings, with the addition of a freestanding sauna and a boat storage/fitness building.
The almost 1,500ft² cottage consists of two bedrooms, a shared washroom, and an open concept kitchen, living, and dining area with a Laundry/Mud Room.
The 900ft² bunkie, a short walk away, over the lichen-covered rocks, provides refuge from the main cottage and a view out from the other side of the island.
The exterior roof and walls have a continuous relationship, clad in rustic western red cedar shakes, typical of the local vernacular, yet applied to a new building form to accentuate the profile of each cabin.
The irregular-shaped cedar decks follow the natural rock terrain, scraped away and exposed by glacial shifts over two million years ago.
Viewed from the water, as the materials start to age and patina, the buildings begin to blend and dissolve into the landscape.
Project: Whistling Wind Cottage
Architects: Akb Architects
Design Team: Kelly Buffey, Robert Kastelic, Donald Peckover, Byron White, Tim Wat, Antonio Morais, and Nicole Rak
Client: Private
Photographers: Doublespace
