Photo by doublespace photography/ courtesy v2com
Soft grey standing seam roofing and cladding define the exterior of a 296 m² (3,175 sf) private residence, creating an inviting yet visually restrained facade that emphasizes durability and craft.
Superkül, the project’s architecture firm, uses landform to optimize privacy and orient views. The sculptural standing seam metal roof—the home’s most defining and deferential feature—behaves like an extension of the terrain. Tucked between a field and the forest’s edge in Grey County, Ontario, the house straddles a gentle gradient, offering a deeply contextual response to topography that sublimates the architecture to the land.
Designed to prioritize their clients’ desire for a signature sloping roof and four-season intimacy with nature, Ridge House is both open to and protected from the elements by virtue of its siting. The firm devised a siting strategy that leads with the land and works with the property’s constraints—a naturally occurring downslope, a high-water table, and a prominent ironwood tree—to embed the house in its surroundings while optimizing visual and physical connections to the ironwood and pine forest at the edge of the clearing. The large sloping roof floats above the field’s horizon, while the front facade remains concealed from the main road.
Ridge House privileges passive-first strategies as well as high-performance materials and systems.
Superkül’s clients desired a tranquil home that blurs inside and outside, with an explicit preference for monochromatism, matte finishes, and natural materials. Not only did they design with the land, they also found imaginative ways to bring nature and its rhythms into the interior experience. The principal bathroom looks out to an enclosed garden space—the open secret that sits at the heart of the home. Located beneath a rectangular opening in the roof structure, the garden reaches skyward The negative space created by this internal courtyard enables additional light to filter obliquely into the adjacent components of the program. Strategically staggered skylights bounce daylight off the vaulted ceilings and adjacent walls in the living and dining rooms to cast diffuse illumination across the home. The soft gray of the kitchen mirrors the exterior cladding on the piers, visually bringing the outside in.
Designed to withstand the rural elements, Ridge House prioritizes durability through a standing-seam metal roof and exterior metal cladding, creating a robust, low-maintenance structure built for long-term performance. These assemblies support an efficient envelope strategy that enhances comfort while reducing operational demands.
