Inverness, Nova Scotia, Canada
Cabot Cliffs, designed by Fowler Bauld and Mitchell in collaboration with Outside! Planning & Design Studio, is an extraordinary example of how architecture and landscape can work together to create a world-class destination.
Located on the rugged west coast of Cape Breton Island, close to the town of Inverness, overlooking the Gulf of St Lawrence with tumbling sandy cliffs, and sweeping ocean views, Cabot Cliffs is among the most celebrated golf destinations in the world.
Links is the oldest style of golf, and this links course is laid out along the sandy soil that separates the land from the sea at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.
The team has crafted the course in this dramatic landscape to balance topography, views, vegetation, and wind, with the game itself.
The project has been awarded a 2024 International Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The design of such a course demands a profound sensitivity to the terrain; and the architecture at Cabot Cliffs echoes this sentiment with its relationship between landscape, building, and human play.
The brief for the project was to design eight-holiday homes with 4-5-bedroom suites, a Halfway hut to provide refreshment along the course, and a Pro Shop.
Additional buildings, including 2-3-bedroom homes, a restaurant, and a thermal bath are to be added in the future.
To allow for the seamless addition of these future programs, an incremental approach to the architecture was needed.
A matrix of typological forms was developed to create a kit of parts comprising sheds, gabled bedrooms, and living/dining rooms joined together by flat interstitial roofs.
The forms are arranged in various combinations and orientations, creating unique dwellings that sit playfully on the site while remaining similar in materiality and scale.
Cedar shingle walls and galvalume roofs scatter across the sand dune and fescue grass.
Black masonry fireplaces punctuate the horizon providing cozy spaces to watch the course while linking the earth to the vast sky.
The result is a village, rooted within the vernacular forms of Nova Scotia, complete with sheltered courtyards and intimate pathways that frame views of the ocean while tempering the expansive and rugged setting.
The fractal arrangement of the forms betrays the intimacy of each dwelling.
The houses’ interiors offer a rich spatial experience where intimate corridors expand into full-height gabled volumes that bring light into gathering and sleeping spaces. Each home is oriented to provide privacy with doors and windows that open to refreshing ocean breezes and decks.
The architecture grows out of both its landscape and cultural conditions.
Wood construction is very much part of the vernacular of rural Cape Breton and this material selection allowed the buildings to be constructed from local products by local tradespeople to embed the project in the town’s economy.
Cabot Cliffs has always been about celebrating the simple joys of fresh air, nature, views, and play.
These single-storey buildings spill outside making each structure in and “of” the landscape and blurring the boundary between inside and outside.
The modern aesthetic of the homes underscores the idea that a large house can still feel like an airy seaside cottage and, when combined together, create a village at the edge of the ocean.
Project: Cabot Cliffs
Architects: Fowler Bauld and Mitchell (FBM)
Lead Architect: Susan Fitzgerald
Design Team: Peter Kolodziej, Kaitlyn Labrecque, Alicia McDowell, Stavros Kondeas, and Rita Wang
Technical Team: Stephen Hewitson, Ben Griffiths, Shawn Doyle, and Danny Goodz
Landscape Architects: Outside! Planning & Design Studio
Contractor: Lindsay Construction Inc.
Client: Ben Cowan-Dewar Cabot Links at Inverness LP.
Photographers: Younes Bounhar, Allie Beckwith, and Armand Barragan