Hemlock House: Brian O'Brian's Ontario Farmstead Turned Weekend Retreat

Toronto architect Brian O'Brian has completed Hemlock House, a 3,250-square-foot (302-square-metre) weekend house on a 72-acre (29-hectare) property outside Markdale, Ontario. The facade is slanted corrugated metal. The angled roof carries greenery. It looks, deliberately, like a farm building.

It very nearly was one. The commission began as a modest renovation of a small 1930s farmhouse on the site, but the client eventually opted for a full replacement.

"What started as a modest renovation evolved into a full replacement of the small, 1930s farmhouse," said O'Brian.

How did the architect win the job?

The client had seen another O'Brian project in the area: a 19th-century schoolhouse with stone walls, converted into a cottage. That was enough to secure the Hemlock House commission.

For the new build, O'Brian drew on the region's agrarian architecture. A long entry driveway "traces the lineage of the site", passing the old farmhouse and a century-old barn before arriving at the new house.

The home, the architect said, "extends the language of agricultural buildings into a contemporary domestic form".

The plan is simple: a long two-level bar joined to an adjoining box, set on a flat site ringed by woods and farmland. The bar volume carries a sloped, metal-clad roof; the attached box gets an angular green roof. Think barn and silo, translated.

What does the exterior do?

Quite a lot, for a weekend house. Key features:

• A slanted corrugated-metal wall on the north elevation
• Three windows in that wall, shielded by external perforated steel panels that slide up and down
• A boxy wood-clad protrusion on the same face
• A southern elevation of hemlock siding and ample glazing, overlooking patios and a swimming pool
• Roof overhangs that guard against sun and snow
• A carport under a combined wood-and-metal canopy

"This is meant to feel like an agrarian building at first view, but one that begins softening and opening on approach," said O'Brian. Guarded from the road, transparent toward the pool. Standard farm logic, inverted for leisure.

How is the interior organised?

Public and private spaces are split. The linear, two-storey volume holds a principal suite, a secondary suite, and two bedrooms sharing one bathroom. The adjoining box contains the kitchen, dining area and living room.

Rooms use neutral colours and a mix of earthy and industrial materials. "Concrete and hemlock define every surface, carrying a steady material logic through the house," the architect said.

Hemlock House joins a run of Ontario residential work recently featured on Dezeen: UUfie's renovation of a 1970s chalet on a steep Belfountain site, and Barbora Vokac Taylor's black cabin with wedge-shaped clerestory windows (upper window band set above the sightline). The province's rural stock keeps attracting architects who treat working buildings as a design vocabulary rather than a nuisance to erase.