Project: Rough House
Architects: Measured Architecture
Location: Kitsilano, Vancouver, Canada
Area: 2,500 sq ft
Photographs by: Courtesy of Measured Architecture
This 2,500 sq ft house stands out from the rest of the houses on its street in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighborhood.
Designed by Canadian studio Measured Architecture, the front of the Rough House is covered by cypress boards that have been charred to a deep matte black with floor-to-ceiling windows on both of its floors. The rest of the building is concrete but with variations in its smoothness. In some places it is smooth while in others it is rough and filled with pebbles.
The project consists of the main home and a laneway house which is a small detached dwelling located on the rear of the property, facing an alley. In between the two buildings is an elevated deck.
From the architects: “The Rough House is a single family house and laneway project rooted in the hand-made. With a focus on the relationship of an architect with a boutique building + landscape team, local artisans and select subtrades with a history in hand-made execution, a building emerged which identifies that no one person can envision the outcome of a building built well.
Textural choices have been made, such as carbonized cypress exterior cladding, board-form concrete and repurposed boardform boards white washed for exterior window surrounds and soffit, that address the need for compositional balance not only at the building massing level but also at the scale of fine, medium and coarse material selection. Central to the planning effort is the placement of master bedroom and supporting amenities in the basement adjacent to a full-building-length exterior lightwell to south-eastern light, skinned in weathering steel and accessing a subterranean root cellar. The main floor and second rely heavily on the Japanese principle of shakkei, or “borrowed view”, which attempts to capture a framed view of nature alive rather than create a less spectacular version within the building. As the laneway studio works to eliminate a rear yard at grade, careful consideration has been taken to grant views to an elevated exterior landscape on both green roof and wall of the laneway, and onto the western flanking green roof of principle dwelling form.
Fundamental to the success of this project is the separation of the home from its neighbours in a tight urban condition through the narrowing of building to support increased side yard landscape edges and exterior light well circulation, displaced green space to regain connectivity to yard in an increased densification, and finally a play of textures to increase an intimacy between materials and occupant.”
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