Taking experiential cues from a rabbit’s lair, this home was custom-built for a growing family in the residential Westboro neighbourhood of Ottawa. Hidden behind an existing tree and a protective wooden screen detail, the main living spaces are embedded into the ground, allowing domestic warmth to radiate upward and out while providing safety from the street.

Vegetated roofs, thoughtful circulation, terraces, and divergent openings blur the ground plane across the various levels. The relationships of entrance/emergence, connectivity/seclusion, and descent/ascent can be explored and celebrated through this careful arrangement of program.

Despite a modest footprint, the home’s internal organization playfully subverts the family dwelling by shifting the expectations of levels, views, light, and sound.

The familial joys of dining, conversation, music, and play can be felt in various moments and configurations exemplified through the large vertical space carved from the home’s centre.

Clever opportunities for retreating and reflection are tucked away to facilitate the need for silence and rest.

Internal materials were carefully chosen to be both timeless but reflect the whimsies of the family for which this home was created. This minimal palette is echoed in the exterior which employs black steel and wood to enfold the chambers inside and selectively reveal and conceal the activity of the home within.

Range Life is a contemporary bungalow designed to house a young family in the established Glabar Park neighbourhood of Ottawa. With restrictive covenants governing this particular street, the design of the home was carefully considered and scaled to the context of the streetscape while allowing for playful moments to create a dynamic home supporting the needs of the family, visitors, and passers-by alike.

The traditional hipped-roof geometry of the neighbourhood is subverted into a dramatic knife- edge that serves as a key feature of the home. Exaggerated eaves playfully bend and turn to frame and accentuate selective vertical openings in order to harvest light inward by day and radiate it outward by night. Light wells are carved from the roof depth to bring the inspiration of sky and foliage into the depths of the sleeping rooms.

Various design and detailing strategies were implemented to blur interior and exterior to yield a home that captures both the openness of roaming outdoors with the safety of enclosure. Visibility from the street to domestic activity is minimized through the dramatic vertical cuts into the façade and oblique angles to gracious views, careful functional programming, and a deeply-carved roof with protective overhangs.

Conversely, the public experience of the home is considered with a deliberate glazed cut that separates the garage mass from that of the main home. This vista affords the public a deep, momentary view straight through the home and site. Multiple large-format skylights dissolve the sense of roof enclosure and reveal the sky, as if open to the outdoors. Stairs, garage entry, backyard access, laundry, storage, mudroom, and powder room functions are tucked carefully behind this space - each connected and enhanced by this creative breezeway. Exterior materials fold into the interior walls and allow a transition plane for natural and artificial light to effectively blur the sense of enclosure. Elaborate randomized lighting and warm wood millwork illuminate the space and radiate warmth out to the densely treed lot after sunset.

Great efforts to maintain mature trees and foliage on this property were undertaken in order to lessen impact on the forested nature of this established lot. The new structure followed the old home in order to maintain foundation lines and preserve root systems in the aim of preserving the dramatic tree-lined street as well as respecting the tenets of the restrictive covenants.

The design for this tiny house was derived from the name of the road on which it is sited - Opeongo - originating from the Algonquian opeauwingauk meaning ‘sandy narrows’. Narrows, or channels, through the home were created to maximize and frame the cascading views to the Ottawa River below and the treelines beyond.

Thoughtfully placed in the forested escarpment on Canadian Shield, this decidedly small bungalow [<1000 sq.ft.] became an exercise in privatizing necessary functions, while yielding the majority of the floorplate to the home’s L-shaped circulation. These 2 main axes, bounded by glass and forming the exterior courtyard, were placed in aim of deepening the carved narrows and their consequent views, ameliorating the forested experience of the inhabitants and visitors from the street.

Despite being small, the home has been ‘right-sized’ for the family, The Narrows includes the programatic functions required for both work and living, including open entertaining (indoor/outdoor) and multi-functional office/guest-room, for both daily functions and occasional guests. Additional lighting and material selections help to blur the distinction between interior and exterior and carrying into the home reinforcing the exterior shapes and distinct massing between public and private spaces.

A balance was struck for the public façade of the home, where the same apertures work in reverse. Domestic and natural activity are framed, tree-lines of the forest behind the home exposed through gracious openings, and visual access to the glazed internal courtyard revealed as one approaches the house. Warm light is radiated outward at night due to deliberate material and lighting strategies employing warm wood; hearkening the forest setting, beckoning from the street.

Panoramic view: Living, Dining, Kitchen.

Hand Lettering for each of the timber frame components