Toronto firm WilliamsonWilliamson marks a strong debut with its first house, a simple and serene family retreat nestled into the rolling landscape of southern Ontario
By Alexandra Shimo
Photography by Bob Gundu

With tall grass and exposed reddish dirt, the parched, rolling hills of the Grey Highlands, in southern Ontario, might seem like a strange place to build a cottage. And yet rising from this rural landscape is a modernist home that brings the outside in, a cubist sculpture designed to play with light.

The first major built work of Toronto architects Shane and Betsy Williamson of WilliamsonWilliamson, the two-storey House in Frogs Hollow is nestled into the side of a hill, so that it doesn’t dominate the view. This understated approach was a request from the owner and her family, who love the outdoors and use the house as a retreat from the city, regularly taking advantage of the untamed surroundings to mountain-bike, snowshoe, hike and ski. “It’s raw wilderness,” says the owner matter-of-factly, “and that toughness appeals to us.” The architects began the year-long construction by “hacking through brambles,” says Betsy Williamson, to build a gravel road, an experience she describes as “surreal and terrifying.”

The simplicity of the house, which consists of two stacked boxes with a clerestory peeking through the roof, is one of its salient aspects. To anchor the generously glazed composition, a long, exposed concrete volume stretches out for 30 metres into the landscape, providing a bit of shade and respite from the prevailing winds, and doubling as storage for all that outdoorsy equipment. In striking contrast to this raw element, the warm tones of the house’s vertical cladding – cedar stripping on the lower volume contrasted against pine painted rusty red on the top one – complements the natural environment. The second-floor facade is actually composed of shiplap boards CNC-milled at various widths, with shallow and deep ridges forming a fanlike pattern. Fine-tuning this texture took an extensive amount of time. Initially tested in cad, it was mocked up in one-third scale. The final result tracks the sun’s movement around the house, the grooves gently casting undulating shafts of darkness against the warm linseed oil finish.

Top: Rather than build at the highest point, the family wanted the house to fit in with the landscape. The firm found a way to do that by creating a 30-metre-long volume that extends right into the hill.

Below left: The house’s rustic tones of natural cedar and stained pine complement the wild brush and red clay soil of its surroundings

Below right: The main floor’s three-way view overlooks the region’s low-lying shrubs and rolling countryside, perfect terrain for mountain biking and cross-country skiing.