East Lake

The site drops. Rather than cutting it flat and starting from zero, the house steps down with it, three levels deep, each one meeting the ground at a different height.

That gives it two faces. From the street it is compact and low, a stone entry tower and a garage under a flat roof. From the rear yard it is three floors of glass and stacked decks, facing east into the firs along the property line.

The lowest floor is what makes the house unusual. A sauna behind glass, a lounge with its own fireplace, a bath and dressing room, a bunk room for the children, and a rec room that opens straight onto the covered patio. The hot tub and cold plunge sit outside it. This is not a finished basement. It is the reason people stay the night.

Four materials, in a fixed order. Stone at the base, where the house meets the slope. Cedar across the living floors. Grey panel and dark metal above. Glass on every face that has something worth looking at.

The rear elevation is where it resolves. Three levels of program become three bands of outdoor space, a covered patio at the bottom, a deck in the middle, a balcony on top, tied together by one exterior stair that runs diagonally across the whole facade.

The roof is nearly flat and arrives in two overlapping planes. That is what keeps a three-storey house from reading as a tall one.

The great room sits at the middle of the plan under a twelve-foot ceiling, with the fireplace on the long wall and the glass on the short one. It is dimensioned to be lived in rather than photographed.

The stone from the entry comes inside and does the fireplace wall, so the material holding the house up on the outside is also the one you sit in front of.

The entry runs straight through to the back of the house. One side of it is the same coursed stone as the facade, the other is fluted oak, and the floor carries on between them without a change of level.

The stair climbs against the stone with a thin dark rail and light set into the treads. It is the one piece of the house you touch every day, so it was detailed accordingly.

The kitchen runs along the north wall with a full-size range and a walk-in pantry behind it, sized for a family that actually cooks rather than one that owns appliances. The dining room next to it opens onto the covered deck through a fifteen-foot slider, so for half the year the two rooms are one.

The upper floor is quieter by design. A central hall feeds five rooms and keeps the master suite in the east corner, where the vaulted ceiling and the morning light are.

Behind the bed, fluted oak runs wall to wall. It is the only decorative move in the room, and it works as headboard, colour and texture at once.

The master bath takes the same oak and pairs it with warm stone, a curbless shower and mirrors lit from behind. There is no chrome in the room.

The children's rooms were treated as rooms, not spare bedrooms. Each got its own direction, one in blush and pale oak, one with a mountain wall and darker wood, and each is sized to be grown into rather than out of.