Evergreen Residence

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Perched on a rocky bluff overlooking the Paisley Group of islands, this is a one of a kind residence. Reminiscent of southern Californian modern with its view wall of glass. It is still deep rooted in the West Coast landscape.  

This project is a home designed for a single person (who is a landscape designer) and guests (it operates as a bed and breakfast). It is located in Evergreen – a newer neighborhood on Bowen Island where every new home needs to be Certified Built Green. 

One of the key challenges of this project was integrating a sustainable approach to water. However there were a number of other challenges associated with this project which led to such an innovative building shape and collection of building systems. James worked in a collaborative process with the client to craft a master landscape plan and the building and site architecture.

Innovative ideas:

1. We let the curve in the floor plan be expressed also in the roof shapes.

2. We utilized curved glulam's to turn a complicated building design into a simple diagram of posts and beams.

3. We cradled the view with the front curve of the home and the result is an iconic and rustic stone terrace overlooking the ocean from a bluff top site.

4. We harvested the rain water for drinking with a state of the art water filtration supplied locally by a rain water harvesting expert.

5. We created artificial wetlands and a green roof to leave the site in a better natural condition than we found it!

6. We designed the building’s massing like fine art rather than architecture. Balance and proportion were studied and developed through approximately 10 design iterations and computer modeling. We could afford this by keeping the interior details very simple.

7. We registered the building as Built Green Gold – a requirement of the design guidelines and by doing so made sure it was energy efficient – even with all that glass! We used an energy modeling consultant to confirm the energy flows of the design and fine-tuned the building envelope prior to construction.