Liminal House, West Vancouver, Modern Home British Columbia, Canadian Residence, BC Real Estate Photos

Liminal House, West Vancouver

12 November 2023

Design: McLeod Bovell Modern Houses

Location: West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Photos: Hufton + Crow

Liminal House, Canada

The Liminal House clients came to us at a pivotal stage in their lives as soon-to-be empty nesters. The evolving needs of a family became the impetus for how we imagined a house that could embody the state of transition at a conceptual and experiential level.

McLeod Bovell Modern Houses chose the word liminal to encapsulate ideas that have informed the design process: namely the feeling of inhabiting a transitory place; orchestrating movement through space; and dwelling in the moments between from and to…

The project site straddles the interstice between a suburban residential neighbourhood and West Vancouver’s natural stony seashore. Positioned on an expanded border between land and sea, the building form references the creatures that occupy this interstitial territory, whose physiology has adapted to such challenging conditions.

In the same spirit, the house establishes itself in concrete, stained Accoya wood, and aluminum plate—enduring materials that can resist the battering effect of a shore environment.

Drawing from our experience negotiating complex topography and tight proximity with neighbours, we have learned to abandon the reading of the project as a series of flat “elevations” which exists from an imaginary or inaccessible viewpoint.

Instead, we embrace a scenographic approach where the house can be understood after having moved through and around it. The language of courtyards, cantilevered volumes, and extension of landscaped surfaces onto floor areas below dismantle boundaries between the house and the natural environment.

The changing outdoor atmosphere at the shore not only animates the house, but is in turn animated by the house: views are framed between solid walls and walls of glass; their images duplicated by a dark pool at the edge of the property and by the glazing of internal courtyards. Reflections and refractions of the outdoors evoke a feeling of being neither here nor there, but somewhere in between.

McLeod Bovell is a design office, not an architectural practice under the governance of the AIBC/PGA. Should the project be accepted for publication, please refrain from identifying our office and our work as ‘architects,’ ‘architecture,’ or any such variations.

Liminal House in West Vancouver, Canada – Real Estate Information

Design: McLeod Bovell Modern Houses – https://mcleodbovell.com/

Lead Designers: Lisa Bovell and Matt McLeod

Project size 10940 ft2
Site size 16649 ft2
Completion date 2022
Building levels 3

Photography: Hufton + Crow

Liminal House, West Vancouver, Canada images / information received 121123

Location: West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

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