ONE WITH NATURE
Wood-clad concrete-and-glass home takes care not to disturb endangered Garry oak ecosystem,
It’s the house that symbiosis built: man and nature working together for the benefit of the other.
For award-winning Vancouver architect Marko Simcic, that meant shrinking the home’s environmental footprint and taking care not to disturb an endangered Garry oak ecosystem.
Nature, in turn, flooded the extraordinary creation with light, provided seawater for a man-made river that runs the length of the 300-foot house, and created views of rugged coastline and ocean that listing agent Logan Wilson can only describe as “stirring.”
The result is a wood-clad concrete-and-glass “showstopper” set on a massive oceanfront parcel of land at the south end of Vancouver Island.
The contemporary two-storey house in the semi-rural community of Metchosin, 30 minutes southwest of Victoria, won a Canadian Architect Award in 2003 and a Lt.-Gov. Award in 2008.
“The Metchosin house demonstrates an unusual effort to understand and work with natural ecological processes,” Simcic, of Simcic + Uhrich Architects, explains on his firm’s website, simcicuhrich.com.
He describes the residence as being “sustainably entwined” in the heart of the oak grove.
Simcic accomplished that by designing two long arms of living space on a concrete armature that keeps the house clear of critical tree root zones. Cantilevered floors branch out from the core, keeping the footprint smaller and allowing vegetation to grow around the building.
“It’s really an engineering marvel” that required the skills of several engineers to balance from side to side, according to Wilson, who points out that the total structure is the length of a football field.
“It’s the newest and oldest things coming together: nature and architecture,” he says, noting the tree species are “hundreds of years old.”
The river, or canyon, that divides the house lengthwise serves as a heating and cooling system, carrying spent hydrothermal seawater through a series of cascading pools that vary in width from four to 10 feet. Glass-enclosed bridges connect the two sides of the home.
Flanked by etched glass exterior walls, the canyon also adds an esthetic quality, sending sparkling water reflections across hardwood floors and travertine walls.
Natural light fills every corner and space through an abundance of glass — not just on ceilings and full-height and strategically placed windows but even floor panels, marvels Wilson. “It feels like nature comes inside through the lighting and water sounds,” says the agent with Sotheby’s International Realty Canada. The two arms of the home keep the private rooms separate from social areas, like the formal living room, kitchen, dining room and casual seating area that flow into each other to form one long, 100-foot space.
Other rooms on the 7,500square-foot main level include a master suite at one end and a media/entertainment room with bar at the other.
Decks, terraces and a covered exterior pool and hot tub area provide additional links to nature, as well as panoramic views of 1,400 feet of shoreline, water and the Olympic Mountain range in Washington state, some 50 kilometres away.
The gated estate on 67 acres — “an enormous piece of property for Vancouver Island,” according to Wilson — includes a separate caretaker’s residence, built-in boathouse, garage with hydraulic lift and a tennis/basketball court.
Three years in the making at a cost of $22 million, the architectural monument is a “fantastic bargain” at just under $13 million, he says, citing British Columbia’s foreign-buyer and luxury home taxes as partial reasons for the low asking price.