LIGHT WAVES
THEY REALLY PUSHED THE BOAT OUT ON THIS REDESIGN
Boathouses can be much more than just a place to house boats, of course. But what’s remarkable about this transformed (and still functional) boathouse on the shoreline of Lake Simcoe isn’t just its shipshape interior and breathtaking views. It’s the way the renovation, by the Toronto architects Lynch+Comisso, manages to retain much of the idea of the original structure — and the idea of boathouses in general, both utilitarian and romantic.
The husband- and- wife team of Mary Ellen Lynch and Steven Comisso met as architecture graduate students at University of Michigan, and began their careers in New York City (he’s Canadian, she’s an expat American), establishing themselves mainly with renovations of older residential buildings before settling here. Lynch has a particular passion for lighting, and worked for several prominent U.S. lighting firms, including Fisher Marantz Stone in New York City, who originated not only the Times Square New Year’s Eve ball, but the two blue- spotlight columns that comprised the World Trade Center Tribute in Light.
“The whole world of lighting technology is exploding right now,” she observes. “Particularly LED, which is just expanding by leaps and bounds in the ways you can use it. In many ways, it’s becoming another creative material in the composition, like wood or metal.” The architects’ passion for great lighting was shared by the client, and employing it artistically somewhere in the renovation was one of the givens.
The property itself has an interesting history: it’s actually a narrow sliver of a much larger compound owned by a steel magnate back in the 1920s. Though the estate had long been subdivided into smaller lots, the client’s property still included the 1920s gatehouse, and this boathouse, which (though it was actually built sometime around the ’60s) likely occupied the site of the original.
With its white clapboard siding, lighted cupola, and rather festive ornamental trim around its windows, the boathouse was something of a local landmark. But that didn’t make up for its dated, utilitarian design, and the huge space- wasting boat slip it housed, designed for a 60- foot yacht. The building did enclose “captain’s quarters” above the boat slip that could house guests, but these were spartan and minimally finished. Worst of all, the building sat on the water’s edge like a white elephant, blocking the view.
For all that, Lynch and Comisso found many elements to inspire them: its pleasingly hefty exposed steel superstructure, hanging chains and block- and- tackle in the boat room; the sights and sounds of water beneath the living spaces; sunlight sparkling on the lake; and of course, the rugged Simcoe shoreline all around them. Even the requirement to conform to the regional authority’s strict building codes made for a better design, Comisso says.
“We had to retain as much of the original structure as possible , which was a good thing, since the original boathouse was overbuilt and very strong. But instead of building a new foundation for the docks, we rebuilt the foundation that was there with rock boulders and a steel piling structure, creating a natural fish habitat.”
The boathouse’s viewblocking height was reduced simply by f l attening the gabled roof, and the deck on the water side was widened and improved. But the most dramatic transformation was in the interior. On the lower level ( the water line), the original giant boat slip was subdivided, transected by a steel bridge and an inside deck with a panoramic view. One side has room for a stillsizable 30-foot power boat as well as rowboats or canoes, while the other provides a swimming hole, sheltered from wind and rough water.
Here, as in the main living quarters on the upper level, windows now replace walls on three sides, maximizing the spectacular view of both water and landscape, and adding to the light, transparent feeling — figuratively as well as literally — of the building. With so much sky and water, the building falls away, imparting a feeling of being in the scenery rather than simply witnessing it from inside.
The upper level is also where the defining aesthetic element of the design takes main stage: the “tealight wall,” a central dark- painted wall that, broken into three sections, runs the full width of the boathouse, perforated by small, randomly placed rectangular openings, each lined by tiny LED strips. The tealight wall pulls the whole composition together and adds to the lilting, lighter-than-air feel of the design — in fact, the tiny openings suggest the way sunbeams move on the surface of water, or the twinkling lights on a boat.
Also, even with the roof brought down by several feet, at 11 feet the ceiling was rather cavernous. To address this, a slanted white panel was hung below the wood-strip ceiling, adding human scale and another opportunity to “paint” with light. Hidden in a recess at the lower edge is a form of lighting called Elliptipar, which provides a wash of light so pure that no pot lights or other fixtures are needed to break up the expanse of ceiling; in effect the panel is one big lighting fixture.
The largest section of tealight wall divides the upper level of the boatslip from the main living area, which is fronted by an open frame that forms part of a kitchen that is a marvel of space planning. “This is a guesthouse, so we didn’t want the kitchen to be too ‘ kitcheny’,” Comisso says. Even so, with its straight-sawn walnut and local Eramosa limestone facings, custom raw-steel hardware and minimal, neatly fitted elements (fridge and pantry are housed in a wall of cabinets on one side), it has a ship’s-galley orderliness about it – in fact, SubZero-Wolf recently recognized the boathouse kitchen in one of its annual design contests. A trestle table set in front, its raw steel legs another tie- in with the boathouse structure, serves in place of an island.
Despite its spare, disciplined lines and absence of extraneous details, there’s a real feeling that this is a place to relax and unwind — a safe harbour if ever there was one.