Cross-posted from No Mean City, Alex’s personal blog on architecture
It’s rare that a vacation home provides an opportunity to explore one of the basic questions in contemporary architecture. Yet: In today’s Globe and Mail I’ve got a story on a contemporary ‘barn’ by Atelier Kastelic Buffey, and I do that, writing about the role of traditional building forms in contemporary design.
This house, constrained by suburban-style restrictions on the architecture, has a gabled roof, and the architects (who I also wrote about a few months ago) drew its proportions from barns in the area. Yet the building’s material choices, detailing and interior layout are resolutely contemporary and specifically a bit Swiss in character.
More importantly, they make no apologies for adopting a rural pre-industrial typology for a luxurious ski-club house. And, in this case, I’m convinced.
Look:
