Architects:Matière Première Architecture

Year:2026

Photographs:Ian Balmorel

Manufacturers:Lamber t et fils,Mac metal,Maxi-Foret,Versatyl

Lighting Designers:Lamber t et fils

Category:Houses

Contractor:Michel Poulin

City:North Hatley

Country:Canada

Set on a maple-wooded site, the land slopes gently toward a valley where a river traces its course at the base of the terrain. It is within this natural movement of the ground that Perchée takes shape—a house that favors restraint over imprint, and whose siting strategy seeks, above all, to limit clearing in order to preserve the site's most valuable quality: the feeling of being truly immersed among the trees.

The project's name already captures its intent. Perchée—a French word meaning "perched" or "elevated"—refers both to the house's suspended relationship to the sloping terrain, and to the architects' cultural roots. Designed by a French-speaking studio, and set within a Francophone landscape, the decision to retain the original name was intentional: a way of maintaining a direct connection to language, place, and origin. Rather than translating the word, the project allows its meaning to be expressed through the architecture itself. Rather than reshaping the topography, the architecture suspends itself within it. Extended floors and roof planes operate as precise instruments, framing views and carving out a carefully measured clearing around the house. From a distance, the building reads as a softly placed form, almost draped—simultaneously grounded and light.

"For us, this approach—while informed by a Japanese sensibility—is rooted in a nor thern reading of the relationship between building and site," explains architect Marc-Antoine Chrétien. "Climate and topography are never seen as obstacles to overcome, but as parameters to be integrated into the architectural language itself."

The relationship between interior and exterior—an oft-cited theme in contemporary architectural discourse—finds here a more literal expression than simple visual transparency. Perchée does not rely on expansive glazing alone; it establishes a genuine spatial continuity.

"The goal was not to frame the forest as an image," adds Francis Provost, project architect, "but to create spaces that read as true extensions of the interior—physically binding the architecture to its forest context."

Covered outdoor spaces occupy nearly the same footprint as the interior living areas. One does not simply step "outside"; instead, the experience shifts gradually from a tempered room to a naturally ventilated one, without ever losing the sense of shelter. Life unfolds as much beneath the building envelope as under its extensions, shaded by generous overhangs and in constant dialogue with the understory. This logic extends even to the most ordinary functions. Rather than a conventional garage, the space for the car is conceived as a covered volume in reserve—an outdoor room awaiting use. When the car is absent, the architecture remains: the shelter becomes a terrace, a threshold, or a flexible living space, reinforcing the idea of a house that multiplies inhabitable places rather than enclosed square footage.

The longitudinal cantilever plays a central role in this strategy. Far from an iconic gesture, it responds first to site logic. By suspending the house along the slope, the team was able to reduce excavation close to the building and limit impact on the root systems of mature trees. This projection generates a peripheral walkway and, at garden level, an eight-foot-deep sheltered zone facing the pool—an intermediate space, neither fully inside nor outside, where the landscape is quite literally inhabited. Inside, the sense of generosity comes not from increased area, but from perceptual precision. Ten-foot ceilings and a thirty-inch clerestory band detach partitions from the roof plane, allowing light and sightlines to flow freely from one space to another.

"We wanted a house filled with light, but without the harshness of direct sun," says Chrétien. "The roof overhangs do all the work—filtering summer light while welcoming the low winter sun."

Material choices extend this rigor through a deliberately restrained yet highly specific palette. Inside, select spruce sourced from Northern Quebec forests establishes a consistent warmth throughout the living spaces. Outside, materials are deployed by role: red cedar expresses itself in larger structural elements, while white cedar—treated with a weathering accelerator—wraps the building envelope and develops a rapid patina over time. Custom millwork and interior components—from wood-framed glass panels to the built-in library that frames the television—oscillate between solidity and delicacy. Set against brighter surfaces of gypsum and lacquer, these elements assert a vocabulary in which wood remains dominant without ever weighing the space down. Like the project as a whole, these details articulate a carefully balanced tension between anchoring and lightness. Perchée functions as a quiet observatory of the forest—a house that finds its equilibrium not by correcting the slope, but by inhabiting it.

Project gallery