I love when architects and homeowners innovate towards sustainable living!

Homeowner, Maggie Treanor, desired the charm and easy accommodation of a country dwelling.

Using Treanor’s aspirations for simplicity and sustainability as the building blocks, Lisa Moffitt, from Studio Moffitt, designed Treanor’s dream rural Ontario abode.

Intimacy is key to the construction of this 925-square-foot home.

Moffitt spent three years engaged in fieldwork on the site; surveying the land the property would be built on gave them a close acquaintance with the setting.

As a result, the land’s presence is strongly felt.

On the outside, the home acts as a platform to view the land in all directions; Moffitt carries this idea inside, with strategically placed windows that offer Treanor panoramic vistas.

A deck extends out over the sea of crops; at sunset it must be like walking the plank and dropping into the deep red of the horizon.

Inside, the open interior makes the otherwise small space feel as wide and breezy as the landscape on which it sits.

Several passive design aspects keep the house off-grid; an angled roof and triple-glazed windows retain sunlight even throughout the day, saving energy on climate control and light.

The land surrounding the Treanor home is rented out to neighbors for farming; to my knowledge, this is a less exercised, but extremely intriguing, form of mixed use development.

As well, solar panels provide all the energy the house requires.

You can read further on the technical and storied journey towards the creation of this home at Dwell.

Simple design considerations such as these are what excite me most about Canadian architecture. It’s a certain attention to detail that really goes a long way, perhaps as long as the horizon. If houses keep getting built like this, we may continue to enjoy a peaceful horizon for more years to come.

The talented Designer, Lisa Moffitt, is a Lecturer in Architectural Design at the University of Edinburgh. She runs Studio Moffitt, a research-led design practice that investigates correspondence between buildings and their interior and exterior environments. The Treanor project was an opportunity to put these concepts into practice.

To learn more about similar projects, visit Studio Moffitt‘s website.

Photos courtesy of Derek Shapton.

Researched and Written by Emily E.A. Stringer, Undergraduate of Sociology, and Geography: Environment & Sustainability, at the University of British Columbia.