The cottage that Nathalie Bouchard and Annie Horth share on the shores of Lac Orford, at the base of a mountain in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, is a study in how constraints can lead to creativity. The plot is narrow, sitting wedged between busy Route 112 and the water. There were lots of municipal rules to follow, including how close the building could be to the shoreline. Yet the living room is gracious, spacious and serene. A near solid brick wall along the roadside blocks any noise, and expansive views on the lakeside frame the beauty of the water.
“We originally wanted a flat roof,” Horth says. “But the municipality would not allow it.” The ceiling in the space takes full advantage of the resulting peak, soaring up at sharp angles toward a central skylight that measures nearly 40-square-feet – about the size of a walk-in closet. “That was the biggest structural challenge,” says Stéphane Rasselet, Bouchard and Horth’s architect and the founder of Montreal’s Naturehumaine. “We had to be very meticulous with the way the structure converged. But the light is incredibly beautiful, the way it washes down the ceiling and the walls.”
