On the Edge

West Coast home designers are so in love with their forested surrounds that they sometimes allow inside and outside to blur; glass walls melt into the view, as though the structure were apologizing for its presence. But great houses don’t always blend into the landscape; sometimes they explain it.

On San Juan Island, a dozen kilometres off the eastern shore of Vancouver Island, Patkau Architects (John and Patricia Patkau, along with architect David Shone) designed a bold outcropping of a home in the midst of an ideal property: a sun-kissed meadow that interrupts 43 acres of Douglas fir forest. The meadow itself gives way to an Arcadian view of ocean, islands, and rolling green hillocks. From a helicopter, though, you could never miss the timber frame and metal cladding that serves as exoskeleton to this home. Sturdy and clean as a prism, the Agosta house divides the meadow into halves.
The Agostas, long-time New Yorkers with a place in Greenwich Village, had owned the massive property on San Juan Island for five years when their son attended a lecture that John Patkau delivered at Harvard. The couple liked what their son had to say about the lecture, and asked the Patkaus to design their new home: "These were serious urbanites," says John Patkau, "who decided to completely change their life."

What they wanted was a comfortable place to enjoy their semi-retirement, something that had the feel of a summer camp. A place, says John Patkau, "where you could track mud in and not feel bad." Exposed concrete floors fit the bill, as did rugged fir beams to echo the forest outside. The Patkaus worked with the Agostas to outfit the home with mid-century modern furnishings. They designed the dining table themselves, and ringed it with classic Eames chairs. Exterior benches wrap the concrete terrace in a great yawn of wood that seems to invite catnaps in the sun.

And, for all its interior charm, the Agosta house is also the framework for a sublime environment. From the detached carport, which is tucked into the surrounding forest, one walks along a gravel path toward the house. The house bridges the narrowest point of the meadow, with each end disappearing into forest "so you never see the house as a discreet object," John Patkau says. Instead of interrupting the landscape, it unifies it. The 40 species of grass that make up the meadow grow right up to the house’s walls, a bit of landscaping laissez-faire that actually required foresight; the Agostas gathered seeds so they could re-sow the patch of earth destroyed by the construction process.

The house itself conceals the magisterial view of ocean and Gulf Islands until you arrive at the front door. Then, like a dam breaking open, the home reveals through broad squares of glass a flood of open air and water. The few fir trees that sit within the front meadow were left standing; the Patkaus measured out every window so branches would frame the vista like pulled curtains. And presto: the Agostas have their gateway to a calmer life, an escape from the city’s rush. All it took was a little patience, the necessary resources, and smart design. wl

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