Project: Rough House
Architects: Measured Architecture
Project Architect: Clinton Cuddington (project Lead) and Piers Cunnington
Consultants: Fast + Epp – Structural, Geopacific – Geotech, Lyon, Flynn + Collins Engineers – Survey, Measured / Aloe Designs – landscape collaborative
Contractors / Powers Construction – General Contractor, Aloe Designs – Landscape contractor
Design/Build Ceramic Mural Artist / Dear Human – Hand Made Tile.
Location: Kitsilano, Vancouver, Canada
Size: 2500SF
Photography: Ema Peter, Andrew Latreille, Martin Tessler
The Rough House by Measured Architecture is a single family house and laneway project rooted in the hand-made. With a focus on the relationship of an architect with a boutique building + landscape team, local artisans and select sub trades with a history in hand-made execution, a building emerged which identifies that no one person can envision the outcome of a building built well. Textural choices have been made, such as carbonized cypress exterior cladding, board-form concrete and repurposed board form boards white washed for exterior window surrounds and soffit, that address the need for compositional balance not only at the building massing level but also at the scale of fine, medium and coarse material selection.
Central to the planning effort is the placement of master bedroom and supporting amenities in the basement adjacent to a full-building-length exterior lightwell to south-eastern light, skinned in weathering steel and accessing a subterranean root cellar.
The main floor and second rely heavily on the Japanese principle of shakkei, or “borrowed view”, which attempts to capture a framed view of nature alive rather than create a less spectacular version within the building. As the laneway studio works to eliminate a rear yard at grade, careful consideration has been taken to grant views to an elevated exterior landscape on both green roof and wall of the laneway, and onto the western flanking green roof of principle dwelling form.
