Located on an outer island on Georgian Bay, Double Island Cottage is a renovation and addition whose design is profoundly shaped by the site’s topography. The project consists of two adjoining structures: the main cottage, built in the 1980s, and a new pavilion that hovers above the granite. Hewing to three guiding principles — preservation, subtraction, and immersion — we aspired to create coherence between old and new; enhance the intimacy between built and natural forms; and optimize resilience in the face of variable climatic conditions.
Designed to touch the ground lightly and extend the home’s connection to the rock, water, and the sky, the pavilion sits on slender piers and comprises durable materials to withstand the elements across seasons. We adhered to a simple “box-within-a-box” conceit: the glass-and-steel container harbours adjoining white-oak compartments for sleeping, bathing, and dressing. The pavilion culminates in a principal bedroom that offers uninterrupted sunrise and sunset vistas across the bay, with an ensuite bathroom that features a freestanding concrete bathtub that faces east.
The renovation to the existing cottage required striking a balance between retaining and removing. We restored materials and feature elements, like the concrete-block fireplace, to honour aspects of the home’s core personality and minimize unnecessary waste. We also reframed and rationalized the space to expand the house from within by regularizing ceiling heights and introducing skylights, large windows, and sliding glass doors to broaden views, brighten rooms, maximize passive ventilation, and ultimately create a more cohesive and spacious experience.
The interiors are lined with whitewashed knotty pine — a reference to the home’s original materials — and elsewhere finished in a creamy white hue to create an overall sense of expansiveness commensurate with the vast landscape. The ultra-functional Bulthaup kitchen is the home’s fulcrum, anchoring the communal spaces in the original house and interfacing with the glazed link that connects the older cottage to the new structure. A large-format grey porcelain tile backsplash pays homage to the surrounding Georgian Bay rock and ties in with the restored concrete-block fireplace that frames views to the kitchen. White-oak floors infuse a sense of warmth across the main level and forge continuity between the cottage and the addition.
The linear pavilion design was a logical complement to the angular architecture of the original structure. The datum created by the oversized glazing across both forms help forge a harmonious contrast between the pavilion’s volumetric simplicity on the one hand, and the cottage’s geometrical complexity on the other. Generative juxtapositions of this kind were key to the overall architecture: whereas the main cottage is clad in concrete masonry blocks that express a visual gravitational pull down toward the rock, the addition appears to levitate; the glazed link that connects them opens up on both sides to create a breezeway that multiplies access points to the home. Together, the two structures convey a simultaneous experience of solidity and ethereality, durability and permeability, of being both indoors and out.
Team
Architect: Superkül
Contractor: Moon Island Construction
