A quantum of peace and serenity

It would be enough for this vacation home in Queenstown, Canada, to feel good for its residents. But it is also an intelligent play on the house typologies that can be found in the sparsely populated area of New Brunswick. It is also an exercise in architectural theory with a tongue-in-cheek nod to Palladio, Durand, Venturi and co.

Queenstown in New Brunswick, located in eastern Canada not far from the Atlantic coast, does not exactly live up to the expectations raised by its name. Two dozen modest buildings – then you’re through. A mile further northwest, the view falls across a meadow down to “Otnabok Lake” near the Saint John River. There stands the lonely house on a gentle north-facing slope with a great view of the lake: a simple wooden building reminiscent of the barns that are common here, with a metal-covered saddle roof like all the houses here, with a covered veranda like almost all of them, which runs around the house – like none of them here. The house is slightly elevated so that melt water can run off more easily. A symmetrical building, which the view penetrates unhindered through the central bays, glazed to room height on both sides – inside you can see a single-flight staircase rising upwards. A loggia is sheltered here. On both sides of the “hall” are more closed rooms, on the right the kitchen, dining room and wet room, on the left the living room, up the stairs three bedrooms and the bathroom. A simpler layout is hardly conceivable, the logic is obvious from the outside.

Berlin architects Modersohn & Freiesleben designed everything symmetrically, but the various uses fit naturally into the floor plan, without constraints, thanks in part to a few subtle deviations: a glass door out of line where it is needed, a wall that is off-center and a higher window in the gable for the “master bedroom” do not want to obey the strict order and are tolerated with nonchalance – in contrast to an attitude such as Oswald Mathias Ungers would have represented, who would have sacrificed the utilitarianism of his pure doctrine here. Nevertheless, the evenness and order are impressive and characterize the mood of the house as an artifact in the midst of omnipresent nature.

It was quite an effort to direct the local master woodworker from Berlin. The metric measurement system had to be converted and adapted to inches and centimetres. Profiles and timbers with standard Canadian dimensions had to be used. The detailing in some places had to be left to the experienced Baumeister. Only for the floor-to-ceiling glass door fronts could he not offer a solution that was adequate for German requirements. They were produced in Germany and brought to the building site in containers, where they were initially installed the wrong way round on the inside…

In keeping with its simple, almost ascetic character, the house offers in abundance what the owners, who live in hectic London, are looking for: Seclusion and contemplation, serenity and a one hundred percent connection to nature.