Lockeport Beach House

Within a protected cove along the South Shore of Nova Scotia, at the end of a stretch of sand, a river empties out into the sea. Time and tides have created a one-kilometer forested sandbar on which this beach house sits. Approaching the 3 acre site is a journey between a salt marsh to the north-west and the forested-sandbar to the south-east. Along that journey, the beach is never in view, and so, this house is an oxymoron. Despite its dramatic coastal location, the clients were also drawn to the internal, cozy character of the site. Scraggly spruce trees covered in Old Man’s Beard are very particular to this landscape and thrive in the 10 cm of shallow soil here. The trees shelter the site from the openness of the beach and defend against sandbank erosion. Protecting the sandbank, and the clients’ appreciation of hearing the ocean, but not seeing it were starting points for siting strategy. They did not want their new house to be on display from the beach, and so the design response resists the obvious urge to expose the house to the beach, and celebrates the property as a site within a larger site of unspoiled coastline.