Designed by Affleck de la Riva architects, Slate House makes peace with its suburban habitat by matching horizontal landscapes with horizontal forms. Reminiscent of two stacked shipping containers, the house does little to impugn on the landscape's softly rolling topography, nor treat it as a tabula rasa of development by clearing nearby trees.

Glass panes stretch the full length of the building, which might look familiar to hillside houses or beachfront properties, but in a suburban context relates differently to the surrounding landscape. It helps the house blend into the soft transitions from tracts to the nearby forest and stream, and blurs the line between private-property and suburban sidewalk.

From the architects:

Slate House was conceived as an in-situ installation that reveals a pre-existing landscape. Approached as a comprehensive reconfiguration of an entire site, the project considers the house as one component of a greater whole.

Located in Laval, a suburb of Montreal, the site is a residual parcel in a new subdivision laid out over historic farmland.  The project preserves features pre-dating the subdivision including natural topography, a small stream, and a mature deciduous grove.  Surrounded by lots whose terrain has been bulldozed to build tract houses, the project proposes an alternative: the conservation and enhancement of the site’s historic landscape and the reaffirmation of its agricultural and territorial memory.

Slate House stands in sharp contrast to the tract houses that surround it. Orchestrating a progressive discovery from suburban street to interior courtyard to forest and stream, the house is a sheltered oasis in a unique pastoral setting. Two orthogonal volumes frame the courtyard and the natural change in grade from street to stream is used to slide a lower storey under the main level.  Both floors open laterally to the courtyard, the stream, and the southwest sun.

The program called for unique living accommodations that include a spacious garage and workshop for the owner’s collection of vintage automobiles and a full guest apartment. Located on the lower level, the guest apartment opens directly on the courtyard while the main living area above is connected to a wood gallery and a swimming pool.

The building exterior combines natural slate shingles installed using traditional methods of assembly with sheet glass and factory-made aluminum windows.  Commonly found in traditional religious architecture, the artisanal slate finds expression here as a resolutely contemporary material.  Slate House integrates such sustainable features as geothermal and passive solar heating, natural water collection, local species of vegetation, and low-energy electrical fittings. By generously engaging its found landscape, the house initiates a fundamental connection between the inhabitant and the history and culture of a specific place.

DRAWINGS:

DATA SHEET:

• Name of the project: Slate House
• Location: Laval, Quebec, Canada
• Client: Denis Lacroix
• Project manager: Richard de la Riva
• Design architect: Richard de la Riva and Gavin Affleck
• Project team: Brigitte Boudreau, Federico Carbajal and Julie Marchand 
• Structural engineer: D.L. Turner Consultants
• Budget: 450,000 CA$ (~394,000 US$)
• Area of project: 2,760 ft2 / 256 m2
• Project end date: 2010

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