Floating House

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Floating House By SMStudio, 2023
Bowen Island

Photography by James Han
Story by Nadine Cuttingham

Where West Coast Modernism meets Japanese restraint.

SMStudio

Raised in West Vancouver and educated at UBC, Simon Montgomery, founder and principal of SMStudio, grew up surrounded by the legacy of West Coast Modernism. Early visits to Arthur Erickson's office and sustained exposure to the modernist homes of Thompson, Berwick & Pratt on the North Shore established the principles that would come to define his practice. Time working in the studio of Peter Cardew, one of the city's most meticulous architects, sharpened his eye for craft and detail. A period of study in Tokyo brought a further influence: the particular discipline of Japanese spatial thinking, its preference for the pared-down and the considered over the ornamental.

Founded in Vancouver, SMStudio has built a body of work across residential, retail, and commercial typologies, earning recognition from Western Living, Architizer, and the Kyoto Global Design Awards. It is the single-family residence, however, that has most fully expressed the studio's convictions: architecture that concerns itself with connection to its site, honesty in its materials, and the careful celebration of natural light. These ideas found their fullest expression in the Floating House.

The Island

The Floating House sits on the western ridge of Bowen Island, a twenty-minute ferry crossing from Horseshoe Bay on the mainland. On this side of the island, sunnier and calmer than the rest and perpetually oriented toward the afternoon light, rugged trails wind through dense forest, hidden beaches open onto the Strait of Georgia, and dramatic granite bluffs emerge from the treeline. The island sustains a sophisticated community of artists, designers, and professionals who are drawn precisely to what the city cannot offer: old-growth forest, granite coastline, and a quietness that arrives the moment the ferry pulls away from the dock.

For SMStudio, Bowen's geography presented an ideal context for the ideas that underpin the practice's work. The terrain, an intersection of dense vegetation and exposed bedrock, demands exactly the kind of site-specific architectural thinking at which the studio excels.

The Site

Montgomery first encountered the site while visiting Bowen Island for a separate project. The lot, still forested and largely wild, announced itself without ceremony. Two burned-out old-growth stumps stood at its centre, their forms totemic against the surrounding forest, and it was these that the owners fell in love with on first encounter. The house was sited between them, acknowledging their presence as the lot's defining vertical elements and allowing them to stand as witnesses to what preceded the building.

The plan responds to the site's two distinct elevations: the higher forested platform where the house is positioned and the open field below, which drops away to reveal sky and forest in the distance. Set directly on the bedrock, the house is kept close to the ground.

The House

Approaching along the gravel forecourt, the Floating House presents itself with an authority that belies its modest scale. The form is elemental: a steeply pitched gable roof of steel standing-seam panels, spare and deliberate against the treeline, its cedar-clad walls weathering naturally into the palette of the surrounding forest. A cantilever lifts the building fractionally, creating a shadow gap at its base.

The plan is simple and asymmetrical, its two wings arranged to navigate the existing site conditions while maximising privacy and connection to the forest on all sides. The thin roof edge, carried by exposed Douglas fir rafter tails, signals the combination of West Coast Modern structural expression and minimalist precision that typifies the studio's work.

Within

The entry establishes the terms of the house immediately. A small wood bench sits just outside the door, a simple gesture of welcome before the threshold is crossed. Inside, polished concrete flooring runs the length of the entry corridor, its surface chosen as much for resilience as for its cool, refined quality against the warmth of the wood closets nearby. The walls are clean and uninterrupted, finished without baseboards to maintain the crispness of the junction between wall and floor. Over twelve feet of built-in closet storage lines one side — the kind of provision that makes a house genuinely easy to live in. And at the corridor's end, a large square window — five feet across — frames the forest beyond with the precision of a painting.

Beyond the entry, the material language shifts to warmth. Douglas fir flooring and a considered millwork package establish a continuity of timber throughout the living spaces, while quartz surfaces in the kitchen and bathrooms introduce a cooler counterpoint. The home is organized with clarity and intention: the private spaces, including the bedrooms, laundry room, and office, occupy the southern end of the plan, while the kitchen, dining, and living rooms are arranged to the north. One seven-foot sliding door spans the living room's western wall, opening fully to the deck and dissolving the boundary between interior and landscape. The west-facing deck of approximately 560 square feet captures the full weight of the afternoon sun. A freestanding wood-burning stove anchors the room beside the window to the trees, fire and forest held in the same frame. Above, skylights draw light down through the vault, where it moves across the white surfaces and changes character through the day.

Expansive in scale and precisely resolved, the kitchen balances the pleasure of cooking with the demands of practicality. A skylight positioned directly above the countertop and an adjacent large pantry floods the workspace with natural light. An eleven-foot run of windows above the sink and surrounding workspaces frames a view to the east, bringing the forest into the room.

"They're often surprised how much larger it is inside than it appears outside. It feels warm and cozy, especially when the stove is lit."

The Rooms

The private wing delivers on its promise. The primary suite is spacious and carefully proportioned, its walk-in closet and ensuite bathroom sized well beyond what the home's modest exterior might suggest — a recurring theme that rewards those who step inside. The ensuite carries the same material restraint as the rest of the house, its proportions lending it an unhurried quality in keeping with the pace of life that Bowen Island affords.

The secondary bedrooms are similarly oversized, each offering ample room for furnishings, storage, and the flexibility that a growing family genuinely requires. Natural light is present throughout, each room claiming its own share of the forest outlook that defines the house from every angle. It is the spatial ambition that has come to define SMStudio's residential work: practical, precise, and quietly assured.

Call to the Next Custodian

On the western ridge of Bowen Island, where the afternoon sun holds longest and the forest closes in around the clearing, the Floating House stands between its ancient sentinels as though it has always been there.

Its next custodian will inherit not only a work of accomplished contemporary architecture, but a particular quality of life, quiet, grounded, and closely attuned to the rhythms of island life.

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Home Facts

Name: Floating House
Address: 1616 Joan Audrey Ln, Bowen Island, V0N 1G2
Neighbourhood: Bowen Island
Designer / Architect: SMStudio
Price: $2,100,000
Year Completed: 2023
Interior Living: A southwest-oriented cedar-and-metal retreat sited low on bedrock between two burnt-out old-growth stumps, with living volumes cantilevering into the forest. Douglas fir plywood, rafters, flooring, and millwork warm the interiors throughout; Caesarstone surfaces run across every counter and backsplash; a wood stove anchors the gathering spaces. The plan reads larger from within than the low, grounded exterior suggests.
Site Area: 43,560 sqft (1 acre)
Levels: 2
Bedrooms: 3
Bathrooms: 3
Interior Living: 2304 sqft
Exterior Living: 603 sqft

Structural / Engineering Highlights:
- Sited directly on bedrock, kept low to the ground while carefully elevated and cantilevering southwest into the forest
- Custom steel stairs
Landscape and Planning:
- Blast rock from construction reintegrated into the gardens, used as steps for the deck and the base of the entrance stairs
- Surrounded by mature cedars and firs, with the site selectively cleared to bring morning and afternoon sun onto the back deck
- Front yard composed in two zones: four planted Nootka cedars at the edge layered with ferns, grasses, Japanese anemones, greater masterwort, erbena, and great burnet, transitioning into fern zones leading to the house
- "Wind garden" off the kitchen of Mexican feather grass, Mexican leabane, arrow, and Gaura — designed to move with the wind, drying back beautifully in winter
- Stewartia onadelpha and lilac bushes on the side yard
- Hillside outside the living room window reforested with moss, ferns, flowers, and salal
- Moss garden cultivated on the rock outcrop framed by the entry (previously bare)
- Initial zoning by [landscape designer TK]; planting and bed design by the homeowners
Key Materials:
- Weathered steel roof
- Cedar siding with weathering stain
- Douglas fir plywood ceilings and rafters
- Douglas fir flooring and full millwork package (custom millwork by Steve Cruden)
- Caesarstone counters and backsplashes throughout
- Custom steel stairs
- Cascadia window systems
- A-N-D light column pendants
- Phylrich faucets
- Casson cabinet hardware and bathroom fixtures
- Fisher & Paykel range and refrigerator, Bosch dishwasher, Electrolux stacked washer/dryer
Views / Orientation:
- Oriented southwest for privacy, light, and forest views; living volumes cantilever into the canopy
Features:
- Totemic siting between two burnt-out old-growth stumps (the namesake of the home)
- Bedrock-anchored cantilever extending into the forest
- Wood-burning stove
- Direct access from the back door to lightly used hiking trails
- King Edward Bay beach a short walk down the hill, with sunset swims up the sound
- Nearby meadow with a frog pond
- Designed by its owner-architect