Living in cottage country
Northern Lights Muskoka will construct 207 residences on 1,300 acres and create a 900-acre nature preserve
The neighbours at Northern Lights Muskoka include deer and moose. The air is scented with the surrounding rugged landscape’s cedars and pines. The quiet is punctuated by birdsong.
Set amid 1,300 acres of wilderness two hours north of the GTA, there’s no roughing it at the new Northern Lights Muskoka development of estate homes that are served by high-speed fibre internet and located about 20 kilometres from the town of Huntsville.
The site was a departure from those SigNature Communities vice-president Sebastian Mizzi usually tours. But when he discovered the lake and wetlands, towering trees, granite rock faces and varying elevations, he was awed.
“Being used to GTA-based properties of one to 10 acres, I was blown away by the vastness and scale of this site,” Mizzi
says. “The idea that every homeowner can be part of a community while maintaining seclusion was the part that inspired me more than anything.”
In 2010, SigNature partnered with custom home and cottage builder Infinity Fine Homes on the site. It came with approvals dating back to the 1980s for an estate home development that did not proceed. There were multiple hurdles — stringent environmental requirements and a lack of infrastructure. But those issues have been overcome and with the pandemic accelerating the trend of people working from home and buyers seeking properties
away from the city.
“I believe Covid opened buyers’ eyes to how wonderful the Muskokas are,” says Mizzi. “There is no community in Ontario that has what Northern Lights has to offer, from privacy, to nature, to all the outdoor excursions one could ask for, to a clubhouse and pool on our own private lake.”
Northern Lights Muskoka will have just 207 homes with homeowners becoming stakeholders in a 900-acre nature preserve containing two provincially significant wetlands and low valley lands bordering the Boyne River.
At first glance, Bold Ruler House appears to be a sprawling Italian villa enjoying a beautiful hillside location.
And that’s exactly what the architects were aiming for with the Texan home that’s named for its street address in Westlake Hills, a suburb in the city of Austin.
Bold Ruler house incorporates old-world building materials — mainly limestone — sourced in the U.S. to create a timeless and time-proven esthetic.
“Architecturally we were inspired by the great temple at Karnak, in Egypt, and the light quality and austerity of the Le Thoronet Cistercian abbey (in Provence, France),” said architect Calvin Chen, partner at Bercy Chen Studio in Austin. “We were also inspired by the load-bearing limestone construction of early German settlers in the region.”
Chen designed the home for a friend who is also an architect. “It’s unusual to have one architect hire another to build a house. It’s a double-edged sword — kind of a dream to have
a client who understands what you are trying to do, but also kind of scary at the same time.”
The 5,000 sq.-ft. home is comprised of four connected structures.
The lower level has the garage built into the hillside and the second level hosts most of the living spaces. Bedrooms border each side of the living area, with a guest room and an office at the rear.
Bold Ruler House was built with more than 400 load-bearing limestone blocks, each weighing two tons, from a local quarry north of Austin. The blocks slow heat transmission
in the summer while retaining heat in the winter. The exterior features stucco and glass, and the roof is weathered steel. All windows are Low-E (emissions) tinted glass. Cantilevered eaves project out to create more shade.
Bold Ruler House, completed in 2019, took two years to design and build.
Architect Calvin Chen answers a few questions about Bold Ruler House:
What are the different influences you drew on to design the home?
I’m from Asia, my partner is Belgian and we work in the U.S.,
so we have a number of different influences.
In the last 20 years, Italian villas started popping up, with terracotta tiles, so the neighbourhood had that kind of influence — and we made an effort to blend with the neighbourhood.
Was the size and weight of the limestone blocks hard to work with?
It wasn’t as bad as we thought. The tools, transportation and machinery to work with these blocks are pretty readily available. The blocks were under $200 (U.S.) each, installed.
In the rural areas, a lot of German
and Czech settlers would use limestone blocks, sometimes just from their backyards. They’re very durable, good at staying warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
What was the biggest challenge?
The bank. When our clients go to the bank, appraisers look for something comparable and no one else has a load-bearing limestone house.
It’s a challenge when you’re trying to be innovative with architecture. If you deviate at all, the bankers, the appraisers, the subcontractors, everyone panics and resists.
The way the sunlight filters into the home is lovely. You designed it that way using 3-D solar simulation software?
You can input your 3-D model and then the location data and the software knows the tracking of the sun at the time of the day. It will simulate the movement of the sun in different seasons so you can see how the light enters the house and how the shadows are being cast. That way you can generate a time lapse video to show the light during a 12-hour period.
You can make micro adjustments to the design of the house, the size of the apertures, how much light you are letting in. It’s a very powerful tool.