Situated on the shores of Lake Memphremagog in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, Maison sur le Lac is a second home designed for two native sisters in the region who share their lives between Montréal and Magog.
Quickly, the two loving customers of the soil, nature and music have expressed the wish for a house with an open living space, where gastronomy and family cooking would be directly linked to nature and the lake. At the heart of the space are three strong and unifying elements of the project: the kitchen, the large table and the piano.
Like the landscape of Memphremagog, the house is built in a spirit of openness, where the physical limits are sometimes blurred, sometimes marked. The panoramic beauty of the surroundings and the immediate landscape serve as an anchor and a starting point for architecture. The large agricultural lands and valleys, punctuated by visual traces such as fences, ditches and stone walls, extend to the horizon and open again to other hilly and mountainous landscapes.
The concept of the house naturally takes up this idea of landscape traces to define the domestic space. Thus, the idea of wood fencing is reinterpreted; located in the center of the site, the latter turns over on itself, several times in an uninterrupted manner, to define an enclosure that encloses the program. From the ground, the wooden headband rises and envelops the living spaces by modulating the openings of the house. The variation of the panoramic views allows an opening, multiple landscapes experiences with the nature and the lake. In addition to this variation in views, the simplicity and volumetric organization of the house are simply based on this element of anchorage to the site and creates a contemporary place of life, inspired by the vernacular typology of agricultural buildings and constructions of the Cantons de l ' East.
