Cottage’s design nabs top award.
The Georgian Bay cottage in Carling designed by Tact Architects Inc.
Submitted photo
CARLING TWP. – A Georgian Bay cottage was among the winners in the Ontario Association of Architects’ (OAA) design excellence category.
Toronto-based Tact Architects Inc. accepts the honour today during the OAA’s annual awards ceremony in Ottawa.
There the firm will also learn whether the public chose the cottage as the best design among the 18 nominees in the category through the people’s choice award.
OAA
In all, the OAA considered 160 submissions, awarding 30 in nine categories, including design excellence, concept and presentation.
Michael Krus, of Tact Architects, designed the winning submission.
The front of the single-storey house is all windows, with the owner taking inspiration from Toronto’s downtown financial district’s glass office buildings, with the inside featuring heated cement floors. It is also designed with sustainability in mind, with windows that open to act as the only source of air conditioning and a high level of insulation.
Integrated
“They did want the house to be low and integrated into the land, they didn’t want it up on stilts kind of thing, which often happens on a slope site,” said Krus. “We liked the idea of having uninterrupted forest and to the water as possible.”
The cottage was completed a year ago.
Tact Architects opened three years ago. Krus has been an architect for over 20 years.
“We used insulated concrete blocks (in Carling). I’ve never employed that before (and) we’ve never done a house in such as rugged location in the past.”
The firm has never won the people’s choice award before. That award is the result of online voting on the OAA’s winning design excellence submissions.
The Georgian Bay cottage was also a finalist in Azure Magazine for its design.