Located near Creemore, Ontario, Grange House is a poetic and pragmatic architectural composition comprising two interconnected structures — a new addition and a fully renovated barn — that celebrates adaptive reuse, wood construction, and the agricultural vernacular of this Canadian province’s bucolic countryside.
The former barn is a story of adaptive reuse and aesthetic juxtapositions. A previous renovation saw it encased in a concrete shell and wrapped in corrugated steel. Upon stripping away the steel, we redeployed the insulated concrete formwork by integrating it into a high-performance envelope. We reclad the exteriors with a cedar siding treated with a mineral stain that encourages organic calcification; the wood’s pigmentation will gradually alter over time to achieve a weathered appearance that confers long-lasting protection.
The home was designed for a family of five who cherishes entertaining as well as spending time together. For the central gathering space — a luminous kitchen, living, and dining area — we retained the barn’s original structural components, repurposing existing materials to achieve a graceful contrast between historic wood details and contemporary materials. The unfinished wood posts and beams create a rustic framework that brings the newly white-washed secondary log beams and exposed ceiling, polished concrete floors with in-floor heating, Italian marble, and matte white cabinetry into radiant relief. Daylight dances across the ground floor through extensive glazing that offers unobstructed views of and access to the sweeping grounds and surrounding gardens. The second floor houses three modest bedrooms for the family’s children.
A re-envisioned entrance procession opens into a new mudroom whose vegetable-tanned leather upholstery, white oak millwork, and a coco mat foster a warm welcome. The foyer gives way to a glazed link that glows in the evenings like a quiet beacon across the site’s soft, rolling fields. This portal connects the old and new structures along a reimagined corridor axis — the result of an ecological intervention sanctioned by the local conservation authority that saw us shift the footprint of the former farmhouse away from an erosion hazard zone. This westward justification not only creates a continuous edge between the two buildings, but also forges an uninterrupted sightline from the principal bedroom through the den, covered porch, central living space, and out the barn’s south-facing windows towards the lush landscape beyond.
These contiguous and accessible zones of experience across the ground floor, which also includes a walk-in closet, bathroom, and exterior shower off the principal bedroom on the north side of the new wing, consolidate a domestic program that equally supports celebratory gathering, quiet retreat, and aging in place.
Team
Architect: Superkül
Landscape Architect: Janet Rosenberg & Studio
Millwork: Coates Creek Cabinetry
Contractor: James Korthals Contracting Ltd.
