Bogden Residence

Moving from BC to Nova Scotia, this client needed a home built around how she actually lives: alone most days, dogs at her side, but ready to open the doors when people come to stay. The project is three buildings rather than one, a detached garage, a guest house, and the main residence, phased so she could live in the guest house on site while the main house went up around her.

The main house takes on a gabled, barn-like form, its roofline breaking into a peaked window that floods the living space with light. Roof and walls are both wrapped in standing seam metal, a material choice built for what the East Coast throws at a house rather than for looks alone. The guest house sits lower and flatter, wrapped in a deep covered porch on timber posts, more contemporary in profile but tied back to the main house through the same dark cladding and warm wood entries, so the two read as one property despite their different forms.

Between them, the ground does the connecting. A long pool visually anchors the two structures to one another. It's a quiet answer to the brief: a home that feels like hers when she's alone, and opens easily into something built for company when she's not.