This 2000 square-foot cottage is located on the edge of a Precambrian granite island. Designed by Superkul, the site of Shift Cottage is chosen for its orientation and topography. This cottage is also married to its landscape of water, rock, and sky while the glazed link can unite the two principal bar volumes of the cottage.
Design
This cottage is nestled into the rock and also against a line of trees. It is sheltered from the powerful winds on the site that whip across the Precambrian granite island. The cottage’s graphic lines play against the unforgiving granite and the imperfect and organic forms of the wind-bent trees.
The cottage’s low massing and its awesome expression in wood and stone are linked to the same elemental materials of the site. The bar that closest to the shore is occupied by the living spaces while bedrooms are contained in the bar sited against the treeline.
Spaces
Aligned between the volumes, window openings are designed to allow through views to the open water in front and the conifers behind. A cedar deck is terracing down to meet the rock and wrapping around the cottage. This deck hosts outdoor living spaces for all to dine and children to play. There is also an option to bathe comfortably in a private outdoor shower near the master suite.
Materials
This cottage is also designed to tread on the land lightly to keep with the continued generational stewardship of the family of this island. Locally available construction materials and equipment are used for this cottage to easily be barged in, moved, and managed by hands.
There is no destroyed vegetation on the site. The foundations of the pier can avoid blasting of the rock and encourage passive under-croft cooling at the same time. The cottage is ventilated, daylit, and also cooled through an abundance of operable windows.
The use of local and natural materials that left in an unfinished state shows the desire to shrink the environmental footprint of the cottage.
Shift Cottage Gallery
Photographer: Tom Arban