Bernier-Thibault House / Paul Bernier Architecte

© Marc Cramer, Paul Bernier and Vittorio Vieira

Architects: Paul Bernier Architecte
Location: Montreal, Canada
Lead Architects: Paul Bernier
Area: 1950.0 ft2
Project Year: 2007
Photographs: Marc Cramer, Paul Bernier and Vittorio Vieira

Text description provided by the architects. Two boxes made of glass and wood, simple volumes of similar dimensions, were added to this house in the Plateau Mont-Royal in Montréal. One box was placed on the roof and the other one in the garden under the big maple tree. The box in the garden, a playroom for the children, is connected to the interior living spaces and opens up on the courtyard with wide glass doors as a pavilion in a garden. It is also covered with a green roof that blends it in the surroundings when seen from above.

Therefore, the ground floor, the space for family life, is a ‘’L’’ shape that wraps around the garden that becomes an extra room in the summer. The box on the roof shelters the room for the parents, like a tree house for the grown-ups. It is a space lined with wood and from where we can see the city and the sunrise. That box on the roof acts also as a light well for the house below.

The west corner is completely glazed and an opening was made in the floor below to allow the natural light to flow in and filter all the way to the ground floor through the semi-transparent wood trellis bridge of the second floor. The second floor, the floor of the bedrooms, is calm and airy.

The bedrooms open on the circulation ‘’bridge’’ made of wood trellis that floats above the living room in a double height space filled with natural light and that offers views on the garden and the green roof. The stair, made of steel and wood, sits in that space. Few materials were used, mainly oiled yellow birch and oxidized steel. Materials that are simple, relatively low cost and local. Quality without luxury.