Bernier-Thibault House has been designed by Canadian architect Paul Bernier in the Plateau Mont-Royal neighborhood of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The house was constructed as an extension and overall transformation for the architect’s family of four. There was an addition of two bedrooms, one for the kids and one for the adults. The residence also had to be rethought to make it a coherent project in both its spirit and materiality. Here is a project description from the architects, “we wanted to create a house filled with natural light, appeasing, and thought with the day-to-day life in mind. So we had to extend the house and preserve the quality of the garden while working around the various zoning bylaws.

Two boxes made of glass and wood, simple volumes of similar dimensions, were added to the original house. One box was placed on the roof and the other one in the garden under the big maple. A vertical slice of the original garden side wall was taken out and replaced by a wood structure wall that allows for openings on the garden and that acts as a formal link between the two boxes. The original house is veneered with brick and all new interventions are made of wood.

The box in the garden, a playroom for the children, is connected to the interior living spaces and opens up on the courtyard with wide glass doors as a pavilion in a garden. It is also covered with a green roof that blends it in the surroundings when seen from above. The box on the roof shelters the room for the parents, like a tree house for the grown-ups. It is a space lined with wood and from where we can see the city and the sunrise. That box on the roof acts also as a light well for the house below. The west corner is completely glazed and an opening was made in the floor below to allow the natural light to flow in and filter all the way to the ground floor through the semi-transparent wood trellis bridge of the second floor.” Via

Visit the website of architect Paul Bernier here.

Photos: Marc Cramer, Paul Bernier and Vittorio Viera