El Aleph Guesthouse

Project highlights:El Aleph Guesthouse 

• Architecture firm: MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects
• Location:  Port L’Hebert, Nova Scotia
• Category: Two
• Project site: Not previously developed
• Building program type(s):  Residential - single-family detached

• From its perch on a sloping promontory overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in rural Nova Scotia, this 1,450-square-foot guesthouse offers the clients a restorative place to escape and engage with the rugged coastal landscape. Like the rest of the design team’s work, the project is driven by the simple concepts of economy and place to deliver an experience that is both authentic and appropriate. 

  The project’s site largely comprises weathered-granite bedrock along the water’s edge that shifts to low scrub and evergreen trees as it moves inland. The rich tapestry of textures delights the senses and is enhanced by the sound of crashing waves and the touch of cool sea breezes. Its exposure and adjacency to the water subject the house to extreme weather conditions, including high winds, flooding, and hurricanes. In response to those circumstances, the team elevated the house on four steel stilts, projecting it but also heightening the occupants’ experience of floating over the sea. 

  Evoking the cedar-shingle fishing shacks that dot the region’s coastline, the 28-foot cube is clad with a rugged copper shingle skin. Eight inches to the weather and woven at the corners, the skin is expressed as a thin plane that extends above and below the house’s massing. Its northern side is largely mute, with just a single punched window, while the southern end contrasts with its glazing. The offsetting composition lends the house a dynamic quality that oscillates between solid and void. Much like other houses the team has designed, this project incorporates an indirect entry sequence. The clients approach along a tree-lined gravel path that withholds a view of the ocean. From a raided board-form concrete plinth, a 40-foot-long steel bridge extends to a covered entry where full-height glazing reveals the water. Inside, a shiplap kitchen core and bench anchor the main living space. The bedrooms on the second floor are accessed through a hidden folded metal stair. 

  Above, a steel stair, screened by perforated panels, leads to the house’s integrated roof terrace. This outlook provides inspiring views in all directions and evokes poet Jorge Luis Borges’s story “El Aleph,” a point in space that contains all other points.