Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada
Measured Architecture’s Raven House is a before-and-after story about the resurrection of a beguiling house on Mayne Island, a community of a thousand people with a shared love for the forests and ocean that surround it.
The Raven House has recently been awarded a 2023 Future House Award by Global Design News and The Chicago Athenaeum Museum for Architecture and Design.
Spectacularly located on the prow of one of the highest points on the Island, the owners bought and were looking to renovate an existing 1990’s designed house on the site.
The brief, “Ensure the building aligned with their simpler, more minimalistic endeavors in a way that was more evocative of the environment”.
From the outset, the overlying effort of the project was to rethink how the building engaged with nature, preserving the landscape without alteration.
The strategy was to utilize the existing structure to work as a scaffold for a new veil: a sculpturally serene black façade, concealing the swooping roofline of it’s rustic predecessor.
Given the building’s cliff-top location, this veiling provides shelter from the wind, rain and salt spray that had often terrorized the existing structure.
Carved within the angular silhouette of the building is a new deck: A beak-shaped extension of the living room, cantilevering over the existing terrain so as not to intrude on the natural environment around it.
In contrast to the black, angular volumes of the exterior remodel, the existing yellow cedar interiors were neutralized with a palette of whites and greys.
The walls, structure, and ceilings were stripped and painted to render all surfaces uniform, with the texture and materiality of the natural material showing through.
This served as the perfect backdrop to the clients collection of sculptures and artworks, transforming the house into a private, personal gallery now cohabiting with nature and the residents.
Designed for contemplation, the building now stands transformed into a haven for the clients, a culmination of a space guided by the collaborative efforts of all hands involved.
Project: Raven House
Architects: Measured Architecture Inc.
Lead Architects: Clinton Cuddington, Clinton Cuddington & Piers Cunnington
Design Team: James Papa and Patrick Gonzales
Contractor: Powers Construction
Client: Racine Family
Photographer: Ema Peter Photography
