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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

NO MEAN CITY: A green house in Huron County

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Cross-posted from No Mean City, Alex’s personal blog on architecture


In the current issue of Dwell, I have a story about the House on Limekiln Line by architect Lisa Moffitt. It’s a beautiful, small and sustaianably designed house in rural Huron County, Ontario.

Moffitt designed it for her mother-in-law, Maggie Treanor, with thought to green features – solar power, passive ventilation, radiant heating, lots of insulation and more..

She considered the siting with extreme care. And Moffitt helped Treanor build it on a limited budget and using the capabilities of local craftspeople and builders. (Treanor brought in several neighbours to build the place, and she describes it as almost a barn-raising.”

I really enjoyed speaking with Maggie Treanor about her home, and it’s clear that she was a perceptive and appreciative client. She wrote me this note: “Approaching the house from the south, coming home this afternoon – the date almost the summer solstice – I noticed how the shading provided by the roof pitch over the south deck was as precise as the drawings Lisa had made after researching the sun’s elevations and transit at this longitude and latitude across all the seasons.

“It truly is the attention to all the little detail she understood and her effort to design with these details in mind that makes this place so special in the landscape.  It is a house of beauty.”

Here are beautiful photos by Derek Shapton. And here and here are other stories I’ve written in Dwell recently.

 

Maggie Treanor. Photo by Derek Shapton for Dwell.

 

 

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