Home And Garden | At Pugwash Point, A Home With No Fluff
Passersby sometimes mistake Douglas and Maureen Leahey’s new home in Pugwash Point, N.S. for a group of barns or sheds. But Brian MacKay-Lyons takes no offence.
“I like the fact that the building is incognito – that it’s a double take,” says the Halifax-based architect, who designed the home with the farm culture and Scottish barns of the area in mind.
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Clad in uber-durable Galvalume corrugated metal panels, with gabled roofs, this home on the province’s north shore comprises three seamlessly connected buildings, while a fourth stands at attention (offering storage space) between the main dwelling and the winding rural road.
“I guess there’s an attempt to make something that is modern and traditional. The forms of the buildings and the way they are clustered is quite traditional, but the material and the really, really clean lines make it kind of modern,” says Mr. MacKay-Lyons of the multiple award-winning firm, MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects Limited.
“Really old homes are not fluffy. They tend to very, very austere, much like modern architecture.”
Now in the process of relocating from Calgary – where they’ve spent most of their adult life – to Douglas’s hometown, the mostly retired Leaheys – she a family therapist, he a meteorologist – will use this place as a home base from which to travel.
“The dream was a place in Pugwash and a condo in Manhattan,” says Maureen, a New Yorker. “Whether that will ever happen remains to be seen.”
Meanwhile, they’re basking in their home, perched on a bluff overlooking Pugwash Harbour, where they often watch the pirouette of ships going to and from the nearby salt mine.
The single-level dwelling lies alongside a field of wild grasses and flowers, at the edge of two, 2½-acre lots, rather than in the middle. That placement is as intentional as the look of the home, which adds up to 2,100 square feet.
“It’s kind of an obsession of mine: the conservation of the agrarian landscape,” says Mr. MacKay-Lyons, who confesses he urged the family to build on the edge of the field, and buy the field next to it.
The home’s location and form are also acknowledgement of the shore’s sometimes biting winds and harsh weather.
“Making a collection of small buildings was really a strategy to create protected outdoor places in that open agricultural landscape, together with the hedge row on the property line, which also gives some shelter,” explains the architect. “Creating these sort of micro-climates allows them to follow the sun around and get out of the wind when they need to.”
The home features two bedrooms, two baths, and an open-concept living pavilion with kitchen, dining area and living room. A freestanding central “core” includes the streamlined kitchen, pantry, utility room and bathroom, not to mention tons of storage space. Indeed, every spare inch of the home seems to contain a discreet cupboard, drawer or pocket door.
“It’s kind
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