CAPO Residence

The residence roots itself in the site's specific quality: a rocky cliff, perilous and at the limits of habitability.

Critical Context - Focusing on residential architecture, our practice constantly revisits our knowledge in the process of conception and realization, and proposes it as a laboratory of ideas that can influence architectural language in a broader sense, despite the modesty of the interventions.

This vision, fundamental to the firm's practice, denotes a critical stance regarding current issues. It privileges the perception of the place in its essential qualities, a perception constituted by a critical and informed eye, from a cultural and environmental point of view.

In the field of high-end residential architecture, contrary to what the media would have us believe, few innovations have truly changed the lifestyles of occupants since the advent of the Free Plan arising from Modernity.

This characteristic was amplified with time by the technologization of dwelling components, always in a perspective of wellbeing and often in subjugation to architectural language, that which one draws, to assemblies of technical or stylistic considerations.

Our approach thus seeks to refocus the conceptual development around the issues of sensitivity by making use of technology as a support, thereby offering a greater durability to the built work.

In a broader sense, we believe that the accuracy of the architectural design is based on a sensitive cultural anchoring, perceptible in both the natural and built environment. The technological innovations are instrumentalized according to this perspective and are conjugated in strategic ways to the manner of being of the project. Such innovations, we believe, are transmitted to the way of being of the occupants, which is to say, a more sensitive relationship to the world, such as it offers itself to us. A way of opening up to the otherness of our landscape and, by extension, our cultural environment.

The site's oblique relationship, the rocky cliff outlining the city of Baie-Saint-Paul's bay, offers an opportunity, through the physical constraint or the complexity of executing on such a site, one which reminds us of the author Claude Parent, in his famous book La Condition Oblique...

Developed from the very outset in sections, the project is designed above all according to a pre-existing organic path of circulation on the perilous site, initiating a conceptual logic of pathways rather than an arrangement of rooms derived from programmatic components.

These are deployed in various sequences, in multiple orientations, in order to refine the quality of the journey within the interior and exterior spaces. Movement is thus central, both in its presence in the design of the project and in the diversification of the points of view it provides.

The stairways, according to their amplitude, make it possible to reach the different landings of the site, but also to create a subtle distinction between the adjacent decompartmentalized spaces.

The project is thus fragmented into living areas of varied shapes and orientations, maintaining a certain reciprocity with the surrounding ground while positioning the large panoramic view of the river as one of the points of interest of the site.

In this way, the large panoramic terrace overlooking the St. Lawrence River is complemented by other outdoor spaces with direct access from the interior.

This allows for a certain diversification of the sensorial experience of the site, making it heterogeneous and enriching the continuous relationship of the occupants with the immediate environment.

The logic of the project's circulation unfolds from the top of the site, where the main access is located, characterized by a loggia opening onto the St. Lawrence River. This loggia allows one to cross the building to access the terraces facing the river, without necessarily entering the building.

Further down the site, at the end of the staircase and exterior terraces, a final space opens onto a natural plateau, surrounded by the cliff and its large century-old pines.

Now amplified by the interior and exterior routes running along and through the building on either side, the project, before being a stylistic expression, is above all an extension of a pre-existing oblique route on the site.

The architectural intervention thus maintains this characteristic of the place as the only true mode of appropriation. The program "clings" to this structure of displacement.

This situation allowed the owners to question their way of life and to relativize several stereotypes of living. The implementation of the project on the site was done in a progressive and delicate way, thanks to the use of insulating formworks allowing a sequence of successive pours.

This robust construction method allowed the use of stone masonry to anchor the architectural expression to the rocky quality of the site. Assembled in a rustic manner, the format and type of assembly were chosen to meet the site's installation constraints, a relatively malleable module in the precarious cliff context.