Project: House of a Sculptor
Architects: YH2 Architecture
Location: East Bolton, Canada
Area: 1,722 sq ft
Photographs by: Francis Pelletier
House of a Sculptor by YH2
YH2 Architecture is a Canadian architecture firm that you might be already familiar with from their La Luge project that was featured on our site. Their distinct style is apparent in the project that we are going to show you today. It is a modern residence designed for a Polish-Canadian sculptor Jacek Jarnuszkiewicz and it is located in East Bolton, Canada.
The design of the House of a Sculptor project is pretty straight forward, inspired by a game in which every next participant adds a word to the story of the players before them.
The house of sculptor Jarnuszkiewicz is a collaborative work between client, sculptor Jacek Jarnuszkiewicz and architects Marie-Claude Hamelin and Loukas Yiacouvakis. The process by which this project was conceived follows the guidelines of the surrealist’s exquisite cadaver technique where each designer builds following the work done by the previous one. Each sculptural proposition was debated among ourselves until we finally agreed to express verticality as a strong and clear expression of the given landscape’s essence; a vast land overhanging lake Trousers filled by a chiaroscuro coniferous forest.
Once the compositional rules established, the project was developed from the hand of one creator to the other, from volume to plan, from the handling of materials and masses to the upgrowth of interior spaces. The fractioning of masses, the composition of two wood volumes, one light and one dark, the opacity and transparency structural games all make the house unite with nature as well as nature integrate the house.
The open plan of the house offers a natural fluidity and continuity between the forest’s ground level and the lower floor of the house, between interior and exterior. The experience offered by the mezzanine on the last floor is completed by a large covered terrace that simultaneously is a wildlife observation tower and a panoramic belvedere opening itself to the mountains and overlooking the lake nearby.
Vertical composition reminiscent of the mature trees surrounding it, the house opens itself to daylight and to the majestic scenery thanks to the large glass facade covering the three floors. At dawn, the surroundings disappear and the house emerges as a sculptural lantern in the heart of the forest. Expressed tectonics where spatial composition overrides functionality, it is a sculptural house in nature.
