While I was closing up the cottage this year, I took a long walk around the lake. I visited a property that has been abandoned for many years now. The property is a wonderfully rugged bit of land that has pretty good access from the main road. The landscape epitomizes all the qualities of the Canadian Shield. My favorite aspect of the site is the jagged rock that tumbles down to the shoreline. Mature cedars and pines provide a dense canopy right at the waters edge. The water at this point of the lake is jet back, hinting to the extreme depth. The exposure on this side of the lake is less than optimal, but it is graced with spectacular sunsets.

As I was trudging around the site in the unusually cold autumn, I couldn’t help but imagine the type of building that I would build there. I had visions of a simple rectangular box that would jut out from the rock and cantilever precariously out to the waters edge. Its scale would be modest with simple modern gestures to relate it to the natural access and slope of the lot. I was surprised by the clarity and vividness of the image in my minds eye. Obviously, the asthetic borrows heavily from the classic modernists, but I was finding hard to consider any other possible concept for the site.

It wasn’t until I was cleaning out one of my hard drives that I came across a sketch that was pretty much the picture of what I was daydreaming at the lake. This sketch, on a napkin (I know…how cliche), was time stamped 2001, and was likely done a few years earlier. I have vague recollections that it was done while siting in the Denver airport. It was a time in my life when I was doing way more digital design and had set aside my architecture work for awhile.

Although not exactly what I would consider building now (that foundation looks a little brutal), it embodies a lot of the ideas I had for the site. Its funny how some ideas just linger in your subconscious and pop back up at random times. I’ve known about this specific lot for ages (having explored it as a kid), but it was revisiting the site with a designers eye that brought together the sketch and the vision for the property.

I have a design firm to, ideally, work on things that interest me.

Kevin Deevey Architect Inc is an experience design firm. I’ll spare you the details of the business plan, but fundamentally we are a design agency. It doesn’t really matter what the “stuff” is. I feel we have a process and method that will provide a compelling experience as an eventual result. Given our size and capabilities, we do need to pre-qualify our clients in order to provide the highest quality service.

Recently, we entered into an arrangement with a startup venture. I found (and still find) the business idea compelling  and reflects some thoughts I had on this type of venture in the past. Suffice it to say, the business is about providing “last mile” businesses with effective and useful web based marketing collateral. Smaller, regionally focused businesses now have the capability to leverage the powerful marketing tools used by the Fortune 500 web companies. Many of these “small” businesses have relied solely on the “Yellow Pages” as their only vehicle to communicate with their market. Our contribution is to provide digital media design for the initial pilot customers. (more…)

Another recently completed project. These are some of the early construction photos and some preliminary sketches.

Again, not a project that meets the criteria of my business plan, but an interesting client and challenging design project. This one is a combined renovation and addition to an existing 1940′s house in Rideau Gardens, just off Main Street.

The program involved the creation of a new kitchen and living space at the back of the house on the main floor, and the addition of a bedroom and bathroom on the second floor. This new work required the rejigging of some of the existing spaces in order to optimize the layout. The only room not affected by the work was the front living room. (more…)