PROJECT METCHOSIN HOUSE, METCHOSIN, BRITISH COLUMBIA
ARCHITECT MARKO SIMCIC ARCHITECT
TEXT MATTHEW SOULES
PHOTOS MARKO SIMCIC ARCHITECT, UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED
Since the end of the Second World War, the average house size in Canada has more than doubled. In 2002, this average measured in at 1,800 square feet with the largest homes located in British Columbia. The expansion is all the more striking in relation to shrinking household size over the same period. Despite the rising volume of information signalling impending environmental calamity, Canadians appear unable to live in a more compact manner. Given this seemingly incurable addiction to increasingly large spaces, it may very well be that architecture’s most significant task is to reconstitute the “big” in a manner that achieves the benefits of the “small.” That is, to make a big that is more efficient, more agile, and more responsive. Marko Simcic’s Metchosin House on a rural waterfront acreage southwest of Victoria weighs in at 8,000 square feet, but is stretched, subdivided, and made porous in an effort to find the small within the big.
Large buildings tend to hit the ground heavily and this posed a significant challenge for a site that supports mature groves of Garry Oak in close proximity to the shoreline. Garry Oak is a unique species of tree that exists only in a small region of southwestern British Columbia and is in serious decline due to development that is swallowing larger chunks of forested land. The desire to connect the house with the ocean put it on a collision course with the survival of the groves. In a tireless effort, Simcic worked with an arbourist and agrologist to study the particularities of the site’s ecosystem in order to preserve the trees. A surveyor produced a three-dimensional mapping of all trees including the size and location of branches. An air spade was used to gently blow away soil to understand the subterranean root networks. From this rigorous analysis, the house emerged as a long bar that is nestled between two groves, permitting it to both thrust toward the ocean and coexist with the trees. Since Garry Oak is especially sensitive to moisture and nutrient modifications, a specific structural strategy seeks to maintain pre-construction conditions. Uphill surface and subsurface water are allowed to flow under the house because it is raised on a series of concrete piers that support a central structural spine from which floors cantilever. Footings sit beneath the clay line to further reduce impediment to moisture movement while gutterless inclined roof planes encourage an even distribution of rainfall along the perimeter of the home. The careful coexistence with the trees is not only an important act of ecological sensitivity but affords an exciting spatial interlock with the landscape. At certain moments, the trees press up extremely close to the house, forming living edges to the interior spaces. At other moments, the branches extend under and over built form.
In addition to setting the home sensitively within the site, Simcic used the program as an opportunity to break apart the 8,000 square feet into a set of discrete but interconnected pieces; in essence, wrestling small parts from the larger whole. The first move was to divide the bar into two essentially separate buildings, locating the larger main house to the east, closest to the ocean, and the guest house to the west, on the inland side of the site. While separate in the sense that one must pass through exterior space to move between the two, these buildings maintain their affiliation with the whole through tight adjacency and continuity of the roof plane. The second move was to split the bar along its length, placing the more open social programs such as dining, cooking and living on the southern side and situating the more private and enclosed programs like sleeping on the northern side. This straightforward strategy affords a number of opportunities. For instance, the master bedroom and living area can occupy the same floor level at the ocean end of the site, yet they benefit from a degree of separation and hence, privacy. The canyon-like slot between the separated halves contains a reflecting pool that circulates in an open loop with the ocean and provides much of the home’s heating and cooling. Exterior and interior bridges link the two sides. Altogether, the result is a variegated space in which the exterior is omnipresent. While navigating the house, one moves from side to side and between inside and outside, producing an experience that is akin to inhabiting a small village.
The interplay between the parts and also with the surrounding landscape is heightened by an array of punched openings of varying size and location that exist throughout the project. These openings, sometimes touching the floor and sometimes high above, are placed in an effort to produce a range of effects from accepting light bounced off the reflecting pool to creating sightlines from one side of the home to the other, then to the landscape beyond. Perhaps most unexpectedly, this technique plays itself out not only on the walls, but also on the ceiling, in what amounts to an intriguing reimagination of attic space. Punched openings in the ceiling allow visual access into the attic, a space that is both daylit and artificially illuminated, creating unique indirect lighting effects and revealing the delicate wood structure of the roof. The combined porosity of wall and ceiling increases the experiential complexity of the house both unto itself and in relation to the landscape while further fragmenting the home’s volumetric presence.
By emphatically dividing the home into constituent parts and also pursuing a heightened degree of visual interconnection, Simcic foregrounds the question of syntax: what characteristics–formally, tectonically, and materially–do the different pieces of the whole assume and how do they interrelate? It is clear that Simcic has been ambitious in this regard. Outer perimeter walls of the home are clad in vertical tongue-and-groove White Oak, while the walls rising from the linear reflecting pool are clad with glass etched in a pattern mimicking the White Oak. The floors of the main house are Wenge hardwood and those in the guesthouse are finished in a similarly dark brown epoxy concrete. Rooms on the private northern side of the reflecting pool are articulated by exterior projections in plan, while the south side is smooth and linear at its edge, but the continuity of ceiling/attic treatment reinforces a connection. In these instances, the concern has been to signify difference and also to make a legible connection.
Simcic explores the “big” as a domain of almost limitless potential and diversity, where each moment is explored in its own micro context. This is, of course, a fine line to tread, as at what point should the singularity of the whole project supercede the expression of a series of differentiated elements? On these terms, one is tempted to think that the home would benefit from an architectural edit: to be a bit simpler, to be a bit less varied. Nonetheless, the agility of the Metchosin House emphasizes the difficulty in assessing the expansion of a culture’s footprint on a square-foot basis alone and at its strongest, reveals the power of research and performative-based design.
Matthew Soules is the founding director of the Vancouver design firm MSD.
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CLIENT ED AND DOROTHY BANSER
ARCHITECT TEAM MARKO SIMCIC, BRIAN BROSTER
STRUCTURAL EQUILIBRIUM CONSULTING INC.
MECHANICAL EARTH TECH CANADA INC.
ELECTRICAL SCHENKE BAWOL ENGINEERING LTD.
LANDSCAPE ID A LANDSCAPE DESIGN, MARKO SIMCIC ARCHITECT
INTERIORS MARKO SIMCIC ARCHITECT
CONTRACTOR ANDERSON COVE CONSTRUCTION
ARBOURIST DOGWOOD TREE SERVICES
AGROLOGIST ROB
ERT MAXWELL
INTERIOR ENVIRONMENTAL ARCHEMY CONSULTING LTD.
AREA 8,000 FT2
BUDGET WITHHELD
COMPLETION AUGUST 2006