Project name: Ridge House
Architect: Superkül
Structural: Kieffer Structural Engineering
Mechanical: Fire House HVAC Designs Inc.
Contractor: J.W. Gordon Custom Builders Inc
Landscape: Saraga Taylor Landscape Architects
Location: Grey County, Ontario, Canada
Photo: doublespace photography
Area: 3,175 sf
Year: 2024
Project description from design firms Superkül
Tucked between a field and the forest’s edge, Ridge House straddles a gentle gradient, offering a deeply contextual response to topography that sublimates the architecture to the land. Superkül leveraged landform to optimize privacy and orient views, while the sculptural roof — the home’s most defining and deferential feature — behaves like an extension of the terrain.
Designed to prioritize their clients’ desire for a signature sloping roof and four-season intimacy with nature, Ridge House is both open to and protected from the elements by virtue of its siting. Superkül devised a siting strategy that leads with the land and works with the property’s constraints — a naturally occurring downslope, a high water table, and a prominent ironwood tree — to embed the house in its surroundings while optimizing visual and physical connections to the ironwood and pine forest at the edge of the clearing. The large sloping roof floats above the field’s horizon, while the front façade remains concealed from the main road.
Ridge House privileges passive-first strategies as well as high-performance materials and systems. Deep-set overhangs shield the floor-to-ceiling triple glazing on the east and west elevations, mitigating solar gain in the warmer months and letting the lower winter sun’s rays penetrate the home during the colder ones. Glass accordion doors on the west façade work in concert with retractable insect screens to create protected mid-door spaces from which to enjoy the outdoors comfortably, even during bug season. These fully operable doors, which enable powerful passive ventilation and significantly reduce the need for air conditioning in the summer, open out to a cantilevered walkway that was designed to emphasize the property’s soft pitch. Nestling the house within the declivity also helps provide shelter from strong winds and brings it closer to the cooling effects of the woods. The firm eliminated a basement from the design in light of the high water table, which also decreased the project’s overall reliance on concrete.
Superkül’s clients desired a tranquil home that blurs inside and outside, with an explicit preference for monochromatism, matte finishes, and natural materials. Not only did they design with the land, they also found imaginative ways to bring nature and its rhythms into the interior experience. The principal bathroom looks out to an enclosed garden space — the open secret that sits at the heart of the home. Located beneath a rectangular opening in the roof structure, the garden reaches skyward while remaining protected by wood screens that cast playful shadows on the ground. The negative space created by this internal courtyard enables additional light to filter obliquely into the adjacent components of the program. Strategically staggered skylights bounce daylight off the vaulted ceilings and adjacent walls in the living and dining rooms to cast diffuse illumination across the home. A firepit on the home’s southwest corner sits under a vaulted plywood ceiling, while the soft grey of the kitchen extends the grey exterior cladding on the piers, bringing the outside in.
Built to withstand the rural Ontario elements, Ridge House was designed with durability as a chief priority. From the standing seam roof and exterior siding to the marine-grade plywood and prefabricated millwork stained with a low-VOC, water-based coating that absorbs light and protects against scratches, mould, and stains, the home is a robust, low-maintenance architectural structure that was built to last — and perform — for the long-term. High-efficiency zoned in-floor radiant heating provides targeted temperature control, while the cold-climate heat pump, combined with Ontario’s clean energy grid, minimizes carbon consumption for heating and cooling. The Energy Recovery Ventilator mechanical system optimizes air quality by bringing in fresh air while simultaneously enhancing thermal comfort.
About Superkül
Founded in 2002, and co-led by Meg Graham and Andre D’Elia, Superkül delivers deeply contextual architecture of enduring quality and character designed for profound and sustainable livability. They have built a practice by saying yes to hard things, whether that’s tackling complex renovations and retrofits, reimagining heritage and historic spaces, or multiplying housing at all scales. Nothing inspires them more than a good challenge and creating functional spaces full of beauty and light.
Devoted to the creation of luminous spaces that blend eloquence and durability, Superkül design from the inside out to elevate quality of life, place, and spirit. They build homes, not just housing, of all shapes and sizes. And they love to connect the dots between different typologies — single-family and multi-unit residential, commercial and institutional — leveraging their cross-sector knowledge to generate unexpected efficiencies, uncompromising performance, and spatial experiences that foster ease and connection.
While Superkül’s portfolio is diverse, their values and methods are always consistent. They embrace a first-principles approach and respond studiously to site specificities, as well as people’s needs and ambitions. Balancing attention to detail, materials, light, and clean craftsmanship with purposeful connections to the larger built and natural environments, Superkül strives to create spaces that are nourishing, joyful, and grounding.
With every project, Superkül’s objective is always to find ways to do more with less; design for the present, while anticipating the future. Dedicated to long-term performance and resilience, they implement passive-first strategies, life-cycle carbon analysis, renewable and salvaged materials, and advanced building science solutions to ensure they are building responsibly for now and tomorrow.
Source: V2com-newswire.com
