Hood Residence
Modern techniques respect traditional ways
Partial east elevation
by Robert Mellin .In his book, The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century [Grove, 2006], author James Howard Kunstler argues that contrary to most predictions, large cities will eventually become unsustainable, and warns we will be forced to reconsider quasi-rural development and a lifestyle that may even require providing some of our own food.
The design of the Hood Residence in the Newfoundland outport of Middle Arm, Conception Bay reflects regional aspects of sustainable rural development and architecture that continued well into the late 20th century.
In my book Tilting: House Launching, Slide Hauling, Potato Trenching, and Other Tales from a Newfoundland Fishing Village (Princeton Architectural Press, 2003), I documented the remarkable persistence of a sustainable way of life in outport Newfoundland based on the inshore fishery and subsistence farming.
In this sub-arctic climate with inhospitable weather and limited resources, people were always physically active and each season required different types of work in order to survive. The best land was reserved for communal outfield gardens, and houses were clustered around the harbour by infield gardens in what was truly a “working” or productive landscape. Horses, sheep, cows, and goats roamed free and grazed on common areas that were not fenced in as gardens for vegetables and hay production.
Single-purpose outbuildings of many different types, stained with red ochre, were often interspersed with the outbuildings of neighbours. These, as well as colourful houses of similar forms and materials, informed the character of the cultural landscape and created a memorable sense of place.
The houses were very small even though families often had many children, and were usually self-built of local and recycled timber. There was no central heating, and people gathered around the wood stove in the kitchen. The kitchen was almost a public space open to frequent visits from neighbours, and knocking on the door to enter was not required. Family sociability was the result, in stark contrast to the anti-social arrangement encountered in many of today’s new suburban houses with large, multi-purpose master bedroom suites that provide a refuge for parents.
These factors influenced the design of the Hood Residence. Rather than building a single, monolithic structure, the house is composed of distinct parts that are coloured to evoke the memory of small painted wooden houses and ochre-stained outbuildings. Courtyards formed by this composition provide wind-protected, semi-private exterior spaces.
In the traditional outport house, the kitchen was the first room encountered upon entering the house. In the Hood Residence, the main entrance foyer leads to the kitchen, which is open to a wedge-shaped dining and living area with a high, sloped plywood ceiling. The focus of the living room is a Rumford fireplace. Built-in fluorescent light boxes in the living area combine with built-in shelving and lighting valences to sculpturally connect the living/dining area with the kitchen. The kitchen and the dining alcove have large glass areas placed for passive solar gain.
On the other side of the kitchen is a small family room, and above this is the parents’ bedroom. An enclosed, elevated and insulated bridge from the second floor hallway provides access to two small, separate bedroom outbuildings perched on wooden posts, a typical outport Newfoundland foundation detail. These outbuildings, used by the children and occasionally by guests, have high ceilings and bunk beds with the lower beds removable for a desk and small seating area. As in bedrooms found in traditional outport houses, the interior width of each bedroom outbuilding of the Hood Residence is equal to the length of a bed.
Built of standard, well insulated wood framing, the house uses exterior cladding installed with a highly durable rainscreen detail finished with local spruce clapboards and high quality latex paint for low maintenance.
The first floor concrete slab is machine-trowelled and coloured, and contains radiant heating pipes connected to a heat pump. Radiant in-floor heating works very well in the high-ceiling living room as the heat does not stratify. The heat pump uses an aqua thermal system with submerged pipes extending into the protected bay of the ocean of this waterfront property.
Credits
- Architect: Robert Mellin, R.C.A., M.R.A.I.C., M.N.A.A., St. John’s
- Construction: Keith Pierce Newfoundland Structures, St. John’s
- Photos: Robert Mellin
Materials
- Exterior: Wood frame with rain screen wall of vertical battens over a breathable barrier [DuPont™ Tyvek® HomeWrap®] to hold the siding away from the sheathing; fiberglass insulation R20 walls and R40roof by Guardian Building Products; siding local 6in. spruce clapboard with 4in. exposure primed and painted with Benjamin Moore latex; windows Jeldwen double-hung, double-glazed, low-E argon.
- Interior: Drywall painted with Benjamin Moore low-VOC latex,Birch plywood ceings and flooring locally supplied and finished with Benjamin Moore low-VOC latex “Stays Clear” in a satin finish; Lighting by Lutron; Rumford fireplace installed by Martin Palmer.
- Mechanical: Nordic heat pump by Maritime Geothermal, Air exchanger/air cooling unit by Carrier, Radiant floor heating by Rehau.