Some holiday houses use the landscape as scenery. Magdalen House attempts the opposite: it submits to a coastline that may look idyllic but offers little room for constructional romance. Wind, salt, erosion, fragile dunes and limited soil-bearing capacity shape the project as forcefully as the architects at Atelier L’Abri.
Completed in 2024, the house occupies a natural, already inhabited plateau on Havre-Aubert Island. Between the building and the Atlantic lie a beach, protected dunes and a sensitive coastal bluff. These areas were surveyed and delineated during preliminary design. The house was not placed where the view would have been most spectacular, but along the edge of the more stable ground.
Parts of the house and its large terrace are therefore supported on timber piles. This limits excavation, reduces the amount of concrete and keeps construction away from the more vulnerable ground. The direct visual relationship with the dunes, beach and ocean remains intact. Here, ecological restraint begins not with stacking up green terminology, but with knowing where not to build.
Formally, Magdalen House draws on the traditional architecture of the islands. Its gabled roof, compact volume and one-and-a-half-storey organisation recall the local development of the Acadian house. Atelier L’Abri does not reproduce these elements as historical costume. The familiar silhouette is reduced, structurally adapted and translated into a restrained contemporary form.
Cedar shingles cover both roof and exterior walls and are intended to weather naturally to a silvery grey. Eastern hemlock forms the terrace, exposed structure and timber piles. Pine and North American natural stone dominate the interior. The material palette is limited, but that makes its execution more demanding: when little distracts the eye, weak junctions and arbitrary details become harder to hide.
The most important addition to the usual architectural language comes from founding partner Nicolas Lapierre and his account of the collaboration on the islands. It was not merely a pleasant footnote to the supplier list, but a condition for making the siting strategy work. “The collaboration with the local builder helped make our site implantation concept feasible,” Lapierre explains. This was key to the project and its relationship to the surroundings.
Local knowledge also guided specific design decisions. The windows open outwards because of the island’s strong winds, while the type of roof ventilation was adapted to experience with the maritime climate. It was equally important, Lapierre says, “to use local makers and brands to root the project in place and make it feel as if it had always been there.”
His statement identifies the real core of the house. Context is not created only by the roof shape or the colour of the cladding. It is embedded in the siting, the structure, the direction in which the windows open and a ventilation system informed by the conditions of the islands. Local knowledge is not illustrated here; it is translated into building components.
The plan follows the same controlled simplicity. Living, dining and kitchen spaces face west towards the sea and the evening sun, while the bedrooms receive morning light. The kitchen, bathroom, utility areas and mezzanine stair are consolidated within a compact central core. A double-height living space creates generosity without further enlarging the volume. Although “small” is relative: at 185 square metres, Magdalen House is disciplined rather than modest.
Project: Magdalen House
- Location: Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Québec, Canada
- Typology: Residential architecture and holiday house
- Area: 185 square metres
- Architecture: Atelier L’Abri
- Project team: Stefania Praf, Vincent Pasquier, Nicolas Lapierre and Francis Martel-Labrecque
- Contractor: Renaud Vigneau
- Completion: 2024
- Photography: Alex Lesage and Nicolas Lapierre
- Styling: Emmanuelle Roque
Built with the wind
Atelier L’Abri makes coastal tradition contemporary
Some holiday houses use the landscape as scenery. Magdalen House attempts the opposite: it submits to a coastline that may look idyllic but offers little room for constructional romance. Wind, salt, erosion, fragile dunes and limited soil-bearing capacity shape the project as forcefully as the architects at Atelier L’Abri.
Completed in 2024, the house occupies a natural, already inhabited plateau on Havre-Aubert Island. Between the building and the Atlantic lie a beach, protected dunes and a sensitive coastal bluff. These areas were surveyed and delineated during preliminary design. The house was not placed where the view would have been most spectacular, but along the edge of the more stable ground.
Parts of the house and its large terrace are therefore supported on timber piles. This limits excavation, reduces the amount of concrete and keeps construction away from the more vulnerable ground. The direct visual relationship with the dunes, beach and ocean remains intact. Here, ecological restraint begins not with stacking up green terminology, but with knowing where not to build.
Formally, Magdalen House draws on the traditional architecture of the islands. Its gabled roof, compact volume and one-and-a-half-storey organisation recall the local development of the Acadian house. Atelier L’Abri does not reproduce these elements as historical costume. The familiar silhouette is reduced, structurally adapted and translated into a restrained contemporary form.
Cedar shingles cover both roof and exterior walls and are intended to weather naturally to a silvery grey. Eastern hemlock forms the terrace, exposed structure and timber piles. Pine and North American natural stone dominate the interior. The material palette is limited, but that makes its execution more demanding: when little distracts the eye, weak junctions and arbitrary details become harder to hide.
The most important addition to the usual architectural language comes from founding partner Nicolas Lapierre and his account of the collaboration on the islands. It was not merely a pleasant footnote to the supplier list, but a condition for making the siting strategy work. “The collaboration with the local builder helped make our site implantation concept feasible,” Lapierre explains. This was key to the project and its relationship to the surroundings.
Local knowledge also guided specific design decisions. The windows open outwards because of the island’s strong winds, while the type of roof ventilation was adapted to experience with the maritime climate. It was equally important, Lapierre says, “to use local makers and brands to root the project in place and make it feel as if it had always been there.”
His statement identifies the real core of the house. Context is not created only by the roof shape or the colour of the cladding. It is embedded in the siting, the structure, the direction in which the windows open and a ventilation system informed by the conditions of the islands. Local knowledge is not illustrated here; it is translated into building components.
The plan follows the same controlled simplicity. Living, dining and kitchen spaces face west towards the sea and the evening sun, while the bedrooms receive morning light. The kitchen, bathroom, utility areas and mezzanine stair are consolidated within a compact central core. A double-height living space creates generosity without further enlarging the volume. Although “small” is relative: at 185 square metres, Magdalen House is disciplined rather than modest.
Project: Magdalen House
- Location: Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Québec, Canada
- Typology: Residential architecture and holiday house
- Area: 185 square metres
- Architecture: Atelier L’Abri
- Project team: Stefania Praf, Vincent Pasquier, Nicolas Lapierre and Francis Martel-Labrecque
- Contractor: Renaud Vigneau
- Completion: 2024
- Photography: Alex Lesage and Nicolas Lapierre
- Styling: Emmanuelle Roque