Flipping through the latest Dwell magazine, we came across this stunning house in Georgian Bay, Ontario (Canada). The house is only accessible by boat or seaplane and is completely self-sufficient with solar panels, a graywater system (attached to the home’s one sink), a composting toilet, and a wood-burning stove and fireplace. More photos and info below the jump...
To keep warm, the owners heat their bed with rocks warmed from the stove and fireplace. Almost all of the wood used to build the house was reclaimed from old barns in the area.
Read the full Dwell article "On the Rock" by clicking here.
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Comments (7)
Don't trip or you might be impaled by the roof.
A great reminder of how the most unique architecture can arise simply out of the necessity of withstanding nature.
Such a beautiful, warm and sheltering home...
How is arriving by seaplane or boat a green option?
if you take a rowboat it would be green
;)
"To keep warm, the owners heat their bed with rocks warmed from the stove and fireplace. "
Oh joy.
I like the inside, but the outside stuns me, alright.
My dad hand built a cottage in that area back in the 1950's. Hand built meaning no power - all hand tools. There was no road into his property and he floated all the materials in on a raft of old truck inner tubes (pulled by a boat he built),
He didn't make much money back then so he used salvaged wood from tear downs in Toronto and over stock from a lumber company. On one job site he was able to score a barrel of used nails that he straightened on a salvaged anvil.
Did he plan on this being green? Not at all. But times where different and "rooting" around for old materials was what you did back then. This was the generation that would fix their own stuff.
The stories go on forever on resourceful he was, but the reason he built it was so his kids could get out of the city during the summers. What about mom? She loved it and was a real trooper as I spent my first summer in diapers living in a tent with them as he built it.