Gulf Island living: the Clark House, Gabriola Island, BC
Abdallah Jamal
O ne dreams of architect-client relationships such as this. Chris and Nancy Clark had acquired a property on Gabriola Island and wanted to live in the slow and reflective manner of BC’s Gulf Islands. They had both recently begun meditating in order to give priority to spiritual calm in their lives; they are both vegetarians who grow and store their own food, and each had a keen interest in recycling and reuse, especially of materials from the many older houses being demolished in Vancouver. Both being nurses on limited resources, the construction budget was tight. We were asked to design a modest home that was different from the norm — a quiet haven which would express their world view and where they would feel the presence of the site’s natural setting. The house was to have a west coast feel but at the same time reflect their own attraction to the earthy feel of adobe structures and the soli- tude of French country cottages. It had to be wheelchair-friendly for Chris’s father, and have spacious living areas with west light filtered through the tall firs and cedars on the property. The main bedroom was to be dramatic, other bedrooms flexible since they were still dis- cussing marriage and children: Bed & Breakfast was a likely use for the rooms in the interim. site The 1.75 acre site was heavily treed and divided in two by a west facing escarpment atop which a half-acre bench, mostly bedrock, had been cleared by the previous owner for construction. There was a view north east to Georgia Strait from the northernmost part of the bench and only one place to site the house for views and to avoid costly foun- dation engineering — at the edge of the escarpment and as far north as possible. This also allowed for a septic field and vegetable garden to the south where the bedrock receded beneath a cover of earth.
design Conceptual design was guided primarily by Chris’s and Nancy’s spiri- tual aspirations which closely resembled our own. We took the escarp- ment edge as a natural line of balance between the untouched forest in the valley and the cleared part of the site — the spiritual in contrast to the material. The house itself would embody this idea of life’s duality by being itself divided into:
large volume glassy exposed simple space warm reflective spectacular
small volumes solid sheltered complex space cool active humble
A heavy north-south wall divides the plan into contrasting halves. East is a simple box of rectangular bedrooms and bathrooms strung along a linear circulation spine, and west is a canted volume changing from wide and low at the entrance/kitchen to narrow and soaring at the living room, where the roof floats in the tree canopy. As yin and yang, each half has a small element of the other —on the canted side, the kitchen is a rectangle, while an angled reading lookout and meditation platform sit on the simpler east side. The dividing wall between the east and west subsides where the two sides of the plan breathe into each other across the Gallery. Almost unnoticeable, spaced steps along the Gallery drift up to the main bed- room. The wall is a harmonious connection that sometimes separates and sometimes joins the spiritual and material parts of the house. The orientation takes maximum advantage of western winter sunlight while deep overhangs shelter the interiors from too much hot summer sun. The kitchen entrance allows level access to a vegetable garden on part of the flat land and wheelchair access to the main level. Northeast water views enhance the meditative/reflective activities in the northeast part of the house.
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architecture and land
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