Pine Lake Cottage
A post-and-beam timber cottage on Pine Lake in Ontario's Land Between
Timber-frame construction has a long history around the world. Its visually lighter cousin, post-and-beam, is what makes a cottage like this one on Pine Lake possible: long spans, very few interior walls, and glass where the structure used to be.
The owners collect Canadian art and had spent time in Palm Springs, home to the largest concentration of preserved mid-century modern architecture in the world. They wanted a fusion of Pacific West Coast and Palm Springs mid-century, open concept, timber and glass, light and airy, so they could live surrounded by both the landscape and the collection.
James has long been drawn to the same combination by way of Arthur Erickson, Canada's pre-eminent modernist, whose work answered the natural conditions of each site and took cues from the post-and-beam architecture of Coastal First Nations. John Lautner is the other thread. His 1946 Mauer residence, built on a slope above Los Angeles, solves the same problem as a cottage on a Muskoka rock face. It is about an architecture that creates an intimate bond with challenging but rewarding sites, and Lautner knew how to build what he drew.
Post-and-beam, and why it matters here
Both methods use large, heavy timbers rather than slender dimensional lumber. Timber framing joins them with mortise and tenon joints secured by large wooden pegs and raised in parallel bents, the method behind Ontario's pioneer barns. It is beautiful, and it is labour and cost intensive.
Post-and-beam simplifies it into an overall grid with lap joints concealed behind bolted steel plates, engineered and custom made for the project by a steel fabricator. That combination is strong enough to replace load-bearing walls through the middle of the building with widely spaced posts, which keeps the interior open. Since the frame carries the floors and the roof, exterior walls carry nothing, and they can be glass. That is how a lakeside cottage gets a window wall.
Light on the rock
The cottage is nestled in a rocky outcrop on a high sloping shoreline with irregular topography. Timber is forgiving on ground like that. It follows abrupt contours and elevations, so the building appears to emerge from the geometry of the land rather than sit on top of it.
It also reduces or removes the need to blast, which is what usually happens when construction is poorly matched to a Canadian Shield shoreline. The flexibility of the frame protected the outcrops, the vegetation and a small watercourse that trickles down an environmentally sensitive part of the site.
Inside
Flat roofs with a slight slope hold the mid-century line. The plan is simple: a combined great room and kitchen with an adjacent walkout deck as the primary living space, mostly timber and glass on the lake side. Timber picture ledges display the art, and the result has the feeling of a small art museum with a great deal of natural light.
A walkout off the ground floor primary bedroom leads to a covered porch with the lake on two sides and trees on the third, which is one of the owners' favourite spots. Next to the great room, a Muskoka room perched in the treetops has a low sill, so the transition from inside to outside more or less disappears, and a second-floor walkout reinforces the treehouse feeling. James drew a steam room in the lower level with exposed bedrock like a natural grotto; the owners put that on hold and took a dry sauna beside the ground floor bedroom with a view straight down the lake.
The walls are prefabricated insulated panels from Oregon, clad in Abaco hardwood, a sustainable substitute for Ipe that James sourced piece by piece from lumberyards across southern Ontario. The result is sturdy and extremely weather resistant.
The Land Between
Pine Lake sits a stone's throw from Lake Muskoka in Gravenhurst, in the ecotone known as the Land Between, where the Canadian Shield meets the St. Lawrence Lowlands. Ecotones are biodiverse because they hold species from both bordering regions, and this one carries its own microclimate.
Good cottage architecture takes time. This project ran about two and a half years, six months of that set aside for revisions, which gave the owners room to let the idea grow into the cottage they actually wanted.
Spec.
- 01Post-and-beam Douglas fir timber frame
- 02Bolted steel plate connections, custom fabricated
- 03Prefabricated insulated wall panels
- 04Abaco hardwood siding
- 05Window walls on the lake elevation
- 06Flat low-slope roofs
On site, on the lake.
Build your dream on the lake.
We take on a small number of projects each year. If you are planning a custom home, cottage or boathouse and you want to stay in control of it, let's talk.