Location: Cap à L’Aigle, Québec, Canada
Year of completion: June 2016
Area: 225 m2 / 2 425 ft2
Architect: Alain Carle Architecte
Project manager: Alexandre Lemoyne
MATERIALS/
CONTRACTORS
Contractor: Demonfort
Matérials: Wood and stell
Millwork: Demonfort
Flooring: Demonfort
Windows and doors: Alumilex
Exterior cladding: Charred cedar (“Shou-sugi-ban” technic)
Photo credit: James Brittain Photography
Located on the mountainside in the heart of a large real estate
development project, the site of this residence essentially had
been stripped by the developer to promote views of the St.
Lawrence River and thus stimulate sales of the project lots.
Paradoxically, this destructured the natural landscape,
rendering appropriation of the site for residential purposes
more complex, given the overexposure of the land. The
resulting monumentality of the landscape is as spectacular as
it is difficult to appropriate on a residential scale. That is why
the project attempts to fit into this landscape, while seeking a
relationship it can offer in a context of domesticity.
Curiously, this situation is not unrelated to the long tradition
of settlement in the Charlevoix region (Québec), characterized
by the modest scale of the dwellings set against the immensity
of the St. Lawrence River and the rolling landscape.
“La Charbonnière” was designed around this problem of
“fitting” into the landscape, a consideration that is both
formal and cultural. We believe the mode of implementation
of the region’s traditional rural complexes has translated the
rustic culture of yesteryear, which has almost disappeared
today. The subtlety with which the villagers appropriated
their territory according to a precise arrangement of small
volumes of homes or outbuildings, has today been supplanted
by uniform deployment of a residential typology that is much
more suburban than rustic.
The project plan plots an interior yard fronting on the St.
Lawrence River, like an arm that hugs and protects the
inhabitants from the immensity of the landscape. The exterior
volumetry is abstract and intriguing. It emerges from the soil,
like a sculptural object, facing the river’s monumentality.
The scale is ambiguous, in the image of the surrounding
landscape. The charred cedar walls, produced by the “shousugi-ban” technique are free of windows on the side facing the road and contribute to the strangeness of this form, which
divides the landscape without imposing itself.
The deployment of the spaces hugs the contours of the site,
clearing two habitable storeys but maintaining direct access
at ground level over the entire perimeter. This allows direct
appropriation of the outdoor site while allowing some privacy
for the users. The meal preparation spaces are vast and
constitute the residence’s living centre, opening onto the
inner yard. The living room is designed like a contemplative
retreat, opening onto the riverscape. In the same spirit, a
dry sauna, largely opening onto the yard, is also offered as a
place of relaxation in the heart of the dwelling, facing the St.
Lawrence.
The esthetics of the indoor spaces have a rustic stamp. The
materiality refers to our roots, more rustic than modernist,
closer to the earth. Its internal organization is organic, like
our beautiful rural homes designed without an architect…
