A Sustainable Expansion Revitalizes a Century-Old Quebec Retreat

Renovation and addition projects tend to either emphasize the contrast between the old and new—sometimes rather fussily and didactically—or conceal the architect’s parti, presenting a new, temporally and spatially seamless whole. Opting out of this binary, a residential project in Quebec instead advances a more “ambiguous dialogue” between past and present, balancing continuities and novelties. Similarly, it incorporates highly modern climate and energy efficiency elements while maximizing the impact of older, existing strategies. 

Montreal-based architecture firm Pelletier de Fontenay took an almost scientific approach to understanding and adjusting the materiality of the existing house, located on a family’s grounds in the Eastern Townships outside of the city, a region characterized by rolling farmland and quiet country retreats. The original 1908 house was built with heavy, deep walls of mismatched stone—recalling a common building material found around Quebec—but with cement as mortar. The “logic” of the house’s structure “was sheer mass and weight,” says Yves de Fontenay, one of the firm’s founders, with the stone-as-aggregate structure essentially functioning as concrete walls “in terms of physics and engineering.” In the 1950s, the house was augmented with a new, boxy front porch addition—made of superficially contextual stone that mimicked the first house—that muddled the layout and turned its back on the surrounding farmland, woods, and pond. 

Harmonizing Project Goals with Sustainable Design Approaches

While working within the existing structures, the architects were guided by two overriding goals: Preserve as much as possible, and create an architecturally unique extension better connected to the landscape and sized for a large family. They wanted the project to operate within the context of the original house’s heft, materiality, and color without resorting to mimicry or excessive opposition. Heating and cooling costs were “astronomical,” de Fontenay recalls, so they’d have to use more passive strategies to increase its thermal performance and overall energy efficiency. “The most logical approach to blend everything together was to rework the surfaces,” de Fontenay says, and as for the durable, deep stone walls, “preserving this was an obvious choice.”

The result, a low-slung, parged-over addition with ample glazing, exhibits both a sharp formal break from the existing structures, and  uniformity with the house’s two volumes. Its horizontal form, institutional aesthetic, and smooth, contemporary surfaces are foils to the original structure’s messy stone composition, domesticity, and verticality. Beyond mere formal and aesthetic distinctiveness, de Fontenay says, the relatively shallow cantilever is calibrated to help limit thermal gain in the summer, while maximizing what natural warmth the sun does provide in the winter.

The addition is unified with the existing parts through a shared feeling of weightiness and a similar protective surface treatment: “Parging everywhere, inside, outside,” says de Fontenay. The firm worked with local artisans to develop a cement and lime parge that covers all structures, old and new, and tested it over the course of the year, ensuring it would bind properly and observing how it responded to the damp summers and severe winters. This treatment—an adaptation of the traditional technique—works in tandem with INTELLO membranes and locally sourced hemp in the interior walls, providing insulation against extreme temperatures and moisture while allowing breathability. “Humidity is a big component of comfort,” de Fontenay says, explaining that the wall liners ensure the house doesn’t function like a “closed bag.”

Embracing Nature within Interiors and Exteriors

The parging is also troweled on in the interior, where partially preserved oak wood floors and local limestone in the kitchen make for a spare, serene palette. The ’50s addition—envisioned then as a porch—was laid out a step below the original house’s floor-plate, so the architects decided to also set the new addition a few steps lower. One departure from the horizontal and sharp proportions characterizing the interior is a sinuous stair—also parged over, naturally—that collects and ventilates warm air in the summer. It distributes heat throughout the house in the winter, with the help of a mechanical heat recovery system.

Outside are more examples of the theme of continuity, with new flower beds and walls of local stone connecting to the landscape. The original basement level was bermed underground, which had previously jutted up awkwardly, further reorienting the complex toward horizontality and its surroundings. Full-height windows and sliding doors enable new visual connections to an adjacent, previously neglected pond and to some newly added vegetation, opening up the house to all the elements that typify this southeastern wedge of Quebec: farmland, forest, and countryside.

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