Metrick Cottage a natural, by design
Muskoka retreat of famed Elte owners nestles into nature with pod structure
Smooth as a lake’s surface on a still summer day, everything from the design to the colours and textures of Metrick Cottage integrates with its natural waterfront, rock and forest setting.
Metrick Cottage and Boathouse is a one-storey, multi-generational, year-round retreat for Ken and Renee Metrick, and sons Andrew and Jamie, who run the renowned, familyowned and Toronto-based businesses of Elte home design and Ginger’s bath.
The cottage is built as three separate but connected pods that cover 5,400 square feet on the shore of Lake Joseph, in the Muskokas.
The main pod hosts the shared public areas — kitchen, dining room and living spaces. There are also two private pods: one with a bedroom, bathroom and office space for the owners, the other with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a lounge area for their adult sons.
Each pod is built on an angle slightly skewed from the others, allowing for a variety of views. The longest views stretch across the lake from the screened porch at the central pod, while the bedroom pods take in more private, landscape-oriented views.
The cottage’s boathouse, that can house three vessels, floats on the water and includes multiple lounge areas and a sunny dock spot.
Building materials include Douglas fir timbers, shou sugi ban fir cladding, cedar decks and torrified ash.
Sustainable features include an insulated SIP panel roof system, well insulated walls, large operable windows offering cross ventilation, deep overhangs and radiant flooring in the bathrooms
Metrick Cottage took 2-1/2 years to design and was completed in 2017.
Kelly Buffey, with Akb Architects in Toronto, answers a few questions about Metrick Cottage:
You describe Metrick Cottage as a modern interpretation of the traditional Muskoka cottage — how so?
The design incorporates characteristics we associate with conventional Muskoka cottages: a gabled roof, exposed timber wood joists, wood-clad walls on the interior as well as exterior, a stone fireplace, etc.
But the way these elements are conceived and combined with each other reflects a present-day approach.
For example, a more open layout conducive to 21st-century living preferences, the use of materials produced using newer forms of technology, a sophistication to building detail design that ensures the envelope of the cottage will perform well over time.
The design makes a great effort for the home to blend in. How did you do that?
The cottage has a dark-clad metal roof and the exterior cladding is a semi-charred wood, both enabling the building to recede into the surrounding forest. The scale of the building is also low-lying, at one storey in height, making it appear more discreet relative to the height of the trees. The gabled roof line is in keeping with the local vernacular.
Can you explain a bit about the two kinds of wood used?
We used semi-charred wood on the exterior, as the process of burning the wood (shou sugi ban) closes the cells.
It is meant to prolong the life of the wood, making it more resistant to rot with exposure to the elements over a long period of time. The semi-charring provides a unique texture, in which the raised grain of the wood is highlighted by the process of charring — with natural wood tones coming through below.
From an esthetic perspective, it provides a unique sense of rusticity that’s relative to weathered barnboard.
The interior floor, walls and ceilings are wrapped in torrified ash, baked to achieve a deep brown colour. By baking the wood, the colour becomes inherent throughout the boards, rather than using a stain that would sit on top of the wood. The predominant use of this single material inside the cottage unifies the interior and conceptually defines a volume that appears to have been intricately carved from the inside-out.
What were the challenges in designing and building this cottage?
We initially designed and developed the building as a twostorey volume. Seven months into the process, we were asked to redesign it as a single storey building. As a result, the design process was longer than anticipated but well worth the extra effort to be sure that the final solution would suit the clients’ lifestyle, preferences and needs.