The Two Bay House at the Project X Estate begins with two simple wood volumes. The architecture emerges not through the addition of elements, but through a series of deliberate acts of subtraction and carving—removing portions of each volume to create entries, courtyards, decks, bridges, and double-height spaces that mediate between shelter and landscape. The resulting voids are as significant as the forms themselves, becoming the spaces through which the house is experienced.
The two bays are similar in form yet distinct in purpose. One contains the communal life of the home; the other provides spaces for retreat. Their differing lengths establish a protected west-facing courtyard that shelters outdoor living from prevailing waterfront winds while capturing afternoon sunlight and extending out to the pool and entertaining areas. At the opposite ends, further carving creates generous covered terraces that extend the living room, office, and primary bedroom toward the lake, allowing the architecture to project into the landscape while maintaining a strong sense of enclosure and tempering the south summer sun on the expansive glazing.
Arrival is conceived as another act of carving. Approached from the east, the entry is recessed beneath a dramatic double-height slatted enclosure before releasing it into the home's central volume. Throughout the day, filtered sunlight casts shifting patterns across these courtyard walls and floor, transforming the entry into a luminous lantern. At night, this same volume light into the landscape signalling the entry point. This vertical space remains a constant point of reference from the double-height kitchen, loft, and bridge above, quietly orienting movement through the house while reinforcing visual connections between its public and private realms.
The centre of the home is defined by volume rather than walls. A double-height kitchen gathers daily life beneath an exposed glulam structure, while the loft and bridge overlook the space, allowing light, conversation, and activity to move freely between levels. The glulam frame continues through the bridge and entry sequence, where bespoke tubular lighting is suspended within the timber structure, emphasizing both its structural logic and crafted precision.
Designed in part for a hairstylist, the home incorporates a salon and spa where a freestanding bath is nestled within a slatted timber enclosure. Rather than separating the room from its surroundings, the enclosure filters views and light, creating a sense of privacy while maintaining visual connections to both the land and the sea. Above, the primary suite occupies the upper level of the private bay of the home, with the bedroom oriented toward the water and a centrally positioned walk-in closet and ensuite accessed from either side of the bed, supporting an intuitive daily ritual.
Although modest in scale, containing only three bedrooms and three bathrooms, the house possesses a generosity that exceeds its footprint. The experience of the home is defined less by floor area than by section—spaces expand vertically, overlap visually, and borrow volume from one another. Carefully framed views, changing light, and the continuity of the exposed spruce glulam timber structure create an architecture that feels simultaneously intimate and expansive.
Materiality reinforces the project's central idea. A protective outer shell of vertically installed Shou Sugi Ban, treated with black oil, gives the building a quiet, monolithic presence within the landscape. Wherever the building is carved away, that dark exterior yields to slatted Shou Sugi Ban and warm, clear vertical grain hemlock that lines walls, ceilings, and decks. The contrast between charred and natural wood makes each subtraction legible, revealing the spaces where the architecture opens itself to light, landscape, and occupation.
Ultimately, the Two Bay House is an exploration of how subtraction can generate richness. Rather than relying on formal complexity, it demonstrates how carefully carved voids can produce moments of compression and release, darkness and light, intimacy and openness. The result is a home whose character is defined as much by the spaces removed as by those that remain.
