Intersecting Shou Sugi Ban Gables create Abstract Quebec Home

Alain Carle Architecte has completed a Shou Sugi Ban home in Quebec, with a split-level organisation that creates “interior landscapes” for its owners to inhabit.

Les Rorquals is a single-family retreat overlooking the Saint Lawrence seaway from Cap-à-l’Aigle. The name is a reference to Rorquals, a type of whale that is commonly spotted in this estuary.

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“This house has a rustic look,” said Montreal-based Alain Carle Architecte in a project description. “Its architecture is more rural than modernist, closer to the earth than to the sky.”

The home is made up of two Shou Sugi Ban-clad volumes with irregular geometries that resemble typical pitched-roof houses. These overlap and intersect, creating an overall form that the architects described as “abstract and intriguing”.

Like several of the studio’s other residences, the exterior of Les Rorquals is all black. “The black pine walls contribute to the strangeness of this form, which intersects the landscape without imposing itself,” Alain Carle Architecte said.

The studio chose a stark palette for the interiors, contrasting solid black shou sugi ban surfaces with lighter touches like pale wooden floors, furniture and cabinets. The angular outline of the exterior is also apparent inside, where the intersecting pitched roofs form complex ceiling surfaces. The architects rendered these planes in white, allowing the geometry to stand out.

Architect Alain Carle started his eponymous studio in Montreal, and has completed several residences throughout Canada. Others include a home split in two by an expansive deck and a mountainside property clad in Shou Sugi Ban burnt cedar.

Photography courtesy of Raphaël Thibodeau.