The Beach House is a horizontal addition to a single-family waterfront home in Northern Vancouver Island. This renovation project modernizes a mid-90s home while preserving its original character through a contrasting new addition. The design enhances the home's aesthetic and connection to the landscape, offering seamless indoor-outdoor transitions across the sloped site.
While the original home maintains its alignment with the street, the new addition extends toward the beach, creating a dynamic transition that seamlessly connects the interior with the waterfront garden. This extension not only strengthens the connection to the outdoors but also acts as a bridge, both visually and spatially, linking the house to its natural surroundings in a harmonious way.
The construction team embraced best practices through close collaboration and an integrated design approach, prioritizing passive design principles to minimize thermal bridging and air leakage. This focus on energy efficiency contributes to the home's overall sustainability. Resiliency measures were also implemented to ensure long-term comfort and environmental control for the homeowners. These include enhanced drainage systems, civil engineering solutions for seismic stability, and the installation of a backup generator, which provides reliable power during outages. These thoughtful elements ensure that the home remains both comfortable and secure in the face of environmental challenges.
Key features include a south-facing breakfast room, strategically placed skylights, and a glazed conservatory with waterfront views, linking to multi-level gardens. The conservatory acts as a visual bridge between the original and new sections. Energy efficiency is optimized through an airtight envelope (achieving an excellent rate of 0.5 air changer per hour), enhanced insulation, HRV ventilation, high-performance windows, and heat pumps.
Architect: Fold Architects Inc.
Design Architect: Unit A Architecture
Interior Design: Piccaluga Design
Structural: Buepoint Engineering
Construction: Lacasse Construction
Photography: James Jones Photography
