Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Author(s): Michael E. Gamble
CLIENTS AND PROGRAMS or REJUVENATION VEHICLEThe clients for this residence are a family off our—a father-businessman, a mother-gallery owner and two daughters—all of whom travel extensively. “Home” addresses would include Toronto, London and now Windermere. The house is conceived as a retreat in an un-spoilt environment. It is designed primarily with small scale domestic uses in mind. The house is also adaptable to large scale entertaining, accommodating varied numbers of occupants from one to several, in a comfortable and gracious, yet efficient and informal manner.One approaches the site on land, from the north, arriving at the highest point on the site. Here a court is cleared in the brush, with the residence to the immediate west. This relatively high elevation allow sentry at an upper, or more precisely, middle level. This middle entry level consists of a large open loggia, a glazed office/apartment, an outdoor kitchen, a bathroom with outdoor shower, and storage. The front door opens to a foyer with stairs that lead down to the main living areas and lower terrace, and lead up to the bedrooms and roof terrace.The lower level consists of a kitchen area, a living/dining area and a small office, with a small terrace and stairs to the adjacent western shore and a large terrace and lap pool with outbuildings to the south. In addition to the house proper, various small landscape shelters and miniature garden follies are planned for the site.RESPONSES, FORMS AND USES EARTH. As with sites on the sea, the context is dominated visually by the horizontal line of the ocean/sky seam. Hard geometries occur relatively rarely in nature and the nominal straight line of the sea is one of the most dramatic of such instances. The less innocent line found at the island is that of the imposed road that runs its course north-south, leadingto our site at its southern tip (1).We might plausibly suggest, in semi-fictional chronology, that our first thought was to impose another line, now running east-west, perpendicular to the man-made datum of the road and parallel to the prevailing winds and the potential surge of the ocean(2). We modeled this line as a wall. This perpendicular datum was then widened in the middle, making it more resilient, and the resultant mirror-wedge is pulled through the rock(3). Wind and hydrology have fashioned a marine-form that cleaves the land and creates and organizes spaces.
Volume Editors
Marilys R. Nepomechie & Robert Gonzalez
ISBN
0-935502-54-8
