Inframe Films Inc/Supplied
The listing: 931 Ocean Park Lane, Bowen Island, B.C.
Asking Price: $8,500,000
Taxes: $19,191.77 (2024)
Lot Size: 1.56 acres
Listing agent: Jamie MacDougall, Engel & Völkers Vancouver
The backstory
On the southern shore of Bowen Island – a small community west of Vancouver that sits smack in the middle of entrance to Howe Sound – there’s a rocky outcrop above the waters commanded by a U-shaped building that looks a little like several houses merged together.
According to Cedric Burgers, principal of Burgers Architecture, the odd footprint – required to protect the Douglas fir and coastal pine trees – became a source of inspiration.
“We came up with a repeated form that would feel like three or four houses nestled together like a village,” said Mr. Burgers, who said the location inspired a building that combines industrial ruggedness and the simplicity of 100-year-old seaside fishermen’s homes in Norway.
“These are very rudimentary buildings that are still standing today. You want something with that kind of longevity,” he said. “It was the right thing for the west coast: it’s remote and we have wild weather swings.”
Mr. Burgers goal was to mix the practical with the high tech. For instance, the silvery Galvalume steel roofs are both storm resistant and striking to look at, but the rainwater gutters aren’t attached to the roof: they sit at the base of the house. It’s not the typical choice for a Canadian home, but it’s important for this location because cleaning them out after a storm involves an afternoon with a rake and not climbing on a roof perched on a cliff.
The house was built by Jack and Maryon Adelaar, long-time family friends of Mr. Burgers’s parents who entrusted him with what was one of his first independent projects in his career.
“It was for me personally a very, very important home to finally express my own individual feelings on what architecture should be on the West Coast,” he said.
Home of the Week, 931 Ocean Park Lane, Bowen Island, B.C.Inframe Films Inc/Supplied
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The house today
Coming up the driveway, the first thing a buyer should know is that those aren’t concrete highway barriers, but rather marble sculptures created by B.C. artist Cameron Kerr. “They weigh 3,000 pounds each. My job is to find a home for them,” said Mrs. Adelaar, an artist herself and long-time patron of the local arts scene.
She and her late husband began building the home in 2009 after falling in love with Bowen Island, so much so that Mr. Adelaar ran for and won the job of mayor for the island community in 2011.
The driveway dips down to a two-car garage that sits on the lower level of the house, and over the dock-like front porch what looks like twin cottages clad in cedar with angular windows at the corners of the building. If you sneak over to the right, you’ll see the house melds itself into the living rock of the cliff.
Through a glass front door, the home rises up a short flight of stairs to a hallway that runs the entire length of the house below a vaulted ceiling. To the left are the stairs to the lower level with garage, art storage space, laundry and mechanical room. There’s also a wine cellar built into the raw rock of the cliff.
The primary bedroom juts out to the right of the main hall, forming one wing of the U-shape. A wall of windows facing south provides unobstructed views of the water and mainland beyond, as well as a peak into the living room on the opposite wing.
Across the hall is the office/den (increasingly obsolete, according to Mrs. Adelaar, as everyone tends to spend time working on the kitchen surfaces) and along the way to the back of the house are two more bedrooms with ensuite baths. There’s also a guest house on the grounds, with two bedrooms and baths and a full kitchen.
As you pass the last bedroom, a large window looking onto the courtyard between the wings of the U frames the dining room and the house opens up to a combined kitchen, living room and indoor-outdoor covered deck.
Along the way, if you looked up you’d see the ceilings are another fusion of highly technical engineering and beauty. Clad mainly in nearly knotless hemlock above Douglas fir beams (sourced from a supplier of hyrdo-pole crossbeams) the light wood floats above the white walls and glass, without any of the beefy structural supports you might expect. Mr. Burgers likens it to an upturned boat.
“That’s another unique structural innovation,” said Mr. Burgers. The roof is held up by 4-inch by 8-inch timbers that meet at the peak of the roof, but that triangle needs something at the bottom to hold it together so it doesn’t collapse under the snow load. The solution was elegantly slim tie-rods every eight feet, but the rods themselves are also supported from the ceiling (otherwise they’d warp and sag under their own weight). “These are all little things that were logical evolutions as we worked, little subtle touches but it’s a very cohesive feel.”
The roofline continues to a wall of windows, including a triangle of glass at the top, that draws in nature and, importantly, the power of the sun.
“This home was very important for us. It was one of the first where we were really thinking about energy,” said Mr. Burgers, who has become a passionate innovator of passive-house design that seeks to lower the carbon footprint of buildings. “A lot of windows face south for solar heat gain onto the black concrete floors – black being the most effective colour in terms of solar heat gain – it’s positioned and designed for the very low sun in the winter it will help to keep warm and stay warm.”
For aesthetic reasons, Mrs. Adelaar was on board, too: “I am a southern-light-exposure person, and this is a complete and utter southern exposure house,” she said.
The connection to nature doesn’t stop with the sunlight, Mrs. Adelaar’s favourite pastime is to sit on the rocks with a cocktail and enjoy what’s happening in nature.
“We never used to see orcas and humpbacks, now you see them every other day. Last summer they slept in the bay below us, you could see them and hear them quietly blowing and burbling at night,” she said. “The day before I woke up around 8 a.m. and there were two buck deer sitting there six feet from my window.”
When home is art
Mr. Burgers meshed his industrial-chic materials with the coastal setting to create a home that’s as much a piece of art as the works Mrs. Adelaar displays on the long white gallery walls inside. But what makes it more than just a weekend retreat and a set of design goals Mr. Burgers credits to his father (also an architect, and founder of the family firm).
“He was looking over my shoulder the entire time,” Mr. Burgers said. “He really had a strong focus on how people lived in the homes. He would always make sure no matter what it looks like on the outside. Is it going to be a place where people are going to feel it’s comfortable.”
Everything from the placement of doors to the height of a countertop has to serve that larger purpose.
“Good design really suggests a way of being and living that you may not yourself have ever thought of,” said Mr. Burgers, who shared another piece of advice from his father: “Don’t make life hard; make life exquisite for them.”