Home Design Interior

Quebec’s Eastern Townships combine Appalachian topography with land shaped by more than two centuries of agriculture to create landscapes that are at once comforting, dramatic and profoundly human. Minton Hill is the extension of a ridge that runs for twenty kilometres along the western shore of Lake Massawippi between the villages of Ayer’s Cliff and North Hatley. Lakeview Lookout, the site of the Minton Hill House, was originally a rest stop on a nineteenth-century bridal trail. The lookout provides a dramatic 180-degree view over the northern end of Lake Massawippi and the surrounding countryside.

The Minton Hill House strikes a delicate balance between the engaging of its panoramic hilltop position and the provision of a protective domestic environment. The house is at once an environmental filter, a view-framing device, and a series of interior and exterior gardens and courts.

The project is composed of four essential elements – the roof, the stone hearth, the wood shell, and the sun window. Celebrating the house’s hilltop position with a spread-wing profile, the floating roof is the project’s defining symbol. Its generous southern overhang provides the solar control of a vernacular Eastern Townships farmhouse in a contemporary architectural form.