Set amid the agricultural expanse of southern Saskatchewan, the vacation house addresses a landscape that is the preeminent domain of industrial and utilitarian structures. The evenness of the country between the Canadian border and Regina generates dual, omnipresent datums—the flat earth itself, and the tall, dense grain planted on it. While the residential buildings scattered throughout this landscape exist within anomalies of trees, hedgerows and miniature lawn topographies that seek to escape from this overwhelming condition, the vacation house takes this dominant characteristic as its point of departure. Clad in a monolithic, oxidizing skin that records the toll of often harsh Prairie weather, the design emphasizes and celebrates the potent experiences of being enclosed between soaring crops and the dark earth, and of floating above the vast expanse of windswept fields.

Location: Saskatchewan

Study completion: 2011, gh3