TRAIL’S EDGE

Whistler, BC, Canada
2019

Trail's Edge embeds itself within a plot of trees in the rugged, natural surroundings of Whistler, British Columbia. The resulting architecture immerses its inhabitants into the site's environment and offers a calming remedy to the cacophony of urban life, using transparent openings, material selection, and scalar relationships to actively reduce its own presence.

Along the western, entrance façade, the architecture has few openings to the public, defining an interior of private seclusion. On the opposite side of the project, however, the architecture takes an extraverted posture—towards nature. Floor-to-ceiling glass transparencies open to the site's natural qualities and begin to dissolve the boundaries between architecture and environment. Local basalt stone is chosen as rugged cladding for select walls on both the exterior and interior, further blurring the spatial separation between outside and inside. The basalt stone also offers a material example of how the architecture embraces the site's unmanicured state, but tames it just enough to achieve the psychological comforts of shelter. Along the eastern façade, slender columns extend the full-vertical height of the building rather than culminating at each floor: the columns reference the height of the surrounding trees, a mix of cedar, hemlock, fir, and spruce. Inside, a similar reference is made with the thin slats act as a subtle, scalar connector between the human scale and the trees of the exterior site, and also allow natural light to travel between programmatic areas. References to the natural surroundings continue in the design of the interior, in which forms, objects, and textures feel naturally created, rather than manufactured.

Architecture: Openspace Architecture
Interior Design: Openspace Architecture
Landscape Architect: Ksalin Land Planning
Structural Engineers: Aspect Engineers
Construction: CBN Custom Building Network
Photography: Russell Dalby and Jesse Laver
Words: Greg Polvi