When their long-time clients approached Considered Design Inc with a private island to take on, the team excitedly accepted the project. The previous owner had hand built a trolley cart rail line for supplies, a cabin, and little by little, a garden. Fragments still remain, as does the graffiti of a courting couple in the 50’s, and day visitors who came by boat, kayak or swam across the channel. Since then, nature has been the caretaker.
With careful attention to maintaining and respecting the island, raised cedar walkways now guide barefooted soles from the new landing, in the same place as the old rickety dock. Guests are invited to explore and wander. Towering Cedar and Firs above, soft ferns and moss below, and around a corner, a clearing opens to reveal a piece of Brooklyn basketball history, albeit the western version, Rucker Park West. The owners and their two boys are big basket ball fans, and wanted to incorporate a court into the landscape. Cozy, heavy canvas safari tents perch on platforms as guest accommodations, and further, a bocci court for more sedate activity. The native planting surrounding the additions restores what was once there, the walkways ensure visitors float above the delicate island ecosystem disturbing as little as possible.
Closer to the cabin, the landscape becomes a little more formal. Steel grate walkways lead to a series of outdoor, more garden-like rooms, crafted out of natural clearings in the trees and rock outcroppings to offer spaces for entertaining and lawn games. A vegetable garden provides fresh greens for the long dining table. Swim spots are given names and reinvented as part of a renewed narration of territory. Jagged concrete platforms provide robust counterpoints to the ever changing tide and the jumble of shoreline logs. These elements combine to foster a new understanding of place, the stories it tells and the scripts yet to be written.
Location: British Columbia, Canada.
Design year: 2021
Year Completed: 2022
