Omar Gandhi Architects has completed Chappell Residence, a contemporary rural home designed in collaboration with furniture maker Brodye Chappell. Located on Prince Edward Island off Nova Scotia, the project brings together a family home and a working studio, exploring the relationship between architecture, landscape and the craft of making.
Designed for Brodye Chappell, his wife and their young daughter, the single-storey residence sits within an open agricultural landscape. Conceived as a restrained architectural intervention in its rural setting, the house establishes a striking silhouette against the expansive skies, drawing on familiar agricultural forms while distilling them into a more minimal, contemporary expression.
The project was developed through a close collaboration between Gandhi and Chappell. While Gandhi shaped the principal building form and exterior material palette, Chappell contributed throughout the interiors and led the construction.
“The ambition was to create a simple, clear line across the agricultural landscape, with a striking silhouette that felt both minimal and grounded in its setting. We wanted the house to sit lightly within the landscape, with its metallic exterior reflecting the sky and the interior offering a warmer, more personal counterpoint.” says Omar Gandhi, Founder & Partner
The architecture draws inspiration from the forms of rural outbuildings, reinterpreting elongated rooflines and traditional profiles through a considered combination of a gable roof and an extended, steeply sloping hip. The resulting form creates a distinctive silhouette while maintaining a low profile, with the single-storey residence sitting just above the surrounding grassy fields.
Corrugated metal and metal siding clad the exterior, selected in response to the changing conditions of the local climate, from summer sun and prolonged rainy seasons to winter snowfall. The metallic finish reflects the shifting sky and surrounding landscape, allowing the building’s appearance to change with the light and weather.
The residence is arranged as two connected volumes: one dedicated to family life, the other to Chappell’s furniture-making and millwork practice. Within the home, the primary bedroom sits beneath the steeply sloping hip roof, while the kitchen and family spaces look towards the courtyard and the long view across the fields to the family home in the distance. Generous glazing brings natural light into the interiors and maintains a close connection to the surrounding landscape.
The adjoining garage and workshop retain a more utilitarian character, with concrete floors, exposed structure and generous wall space for tools and materials. Designed to accommodate Chappell’s ongoing furniture and millwork practice, the space is integral to the residence, allowing the processes of making to sit alongside the everyday rhythms of family life.
Construction took place gradually over evenings and weekends, with Chappell drawing on the help of friends and family to realise the house. This collaborative, hands-on approach is reflected in the finished project, where the architecture is complemented by the work of local tradespeople and the personal contribution of its owner.
Chappell Residence reflects a shared commitment to thoughtful design, material integrity and the value of making by hand. Through its understated architectural form, responsive material palette and close relationship between living and working, the project offers a contemporary interpretation of rural domesticity, one shaped as much by the people who made it as by the landscape it inhabits.
Team:
Design Team: Omar Gandhi, Brodye Chappell and David Greenwell
Construction and Millwork: Brodye Chappell
Architectural Photography: Felix Michaud
Drone Photography: Omar Gandhi Architects and Felix Michaud
Lifestyle Photography: Carolina Andrade
Collaborating Trades and Suppliers: Tim Myers Excavation; Chappell Custom Homes; Control Air Systems; High Valley Plumbing & Heating; EJS Concrete; Doyle Electric; Campbells Carpentry & Roofing; Metro Building Supplies (Home Hardware); Kennedy Metals Inc.; Wildwood Cabinets; Jeldwen Windows & Doors; Markan Woodmillers; Gypsum Joe Drywall; Flooring Canada Charlottetown; Adam Arsenault Welding & Fabrication; Graves Quality Painting; Nic Roe Designs; Atlantic Doors Inc.; Scotia Custom Homes; Concord Custom Lighting; Corrigans Stove Center; Dekko Concrete.
Artworks: Heather Millar; Cohen McDonald; Ben Poechman; Emily Howard; Jeremy Vessey; Alex Bevan Baker; James Johnson; Matt Kenney.
