Residential Houses for Ontario

The pristine landscape of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, is the backdrop for many of the residences designed by Betsy and Shane Williamson. Their most recent projects include two homes – House of Monitors and Dogtrot Cottage – each with its own special story to tell.

The Dogtrot Cottage is the result of lengthy study and research continued by the two designers since the outset of their professional careers. As its name suggests, the construction takes its cue from the dogtrot typology designed to connect two separate structures via a covered outdoor space, a popular building model in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries especially in the southeastern United States. Despite winning a competition for accessory dwelling units over a decade ago in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the concept developed by Williamson Williamson had never been realized. That changed when a client asked the studio to work on a prototype for a residence that could be built quickly and cost-effectively in Magnetawan, a small town in the Almaguin Highlands of Southern Ontario.

Anchored on a small patch of tableland at the end of an access road, the building cantilevers off the slope towards the nearby lake. Adapting the building’s foundation to the site conditions rather than modifying the residential unit itself was a crucial experimental element of the design concept: a series of prefabricated construction systems designed for assembly and mounting by a local workforce. In fact, apart from the concrete foundation slab, the five steel pillars and steel beams of the cantilevered volumes, the building is made entirely of wood. Clad from the roof to the base of the walls in eastern white shiplap slats, the house combines a vernacular aspect with a contemporary interior design, leaving considerable leeway for a customized internal layout and color palette.

The dominant shade chosen was blue, much loved by the owner. The...

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