This complete reconstruction of an overlooked vernacular, the single-storey worker’s cottage, was driven by our client’s profound desire to remain, into her old age, in her home and neighbourhood.

In unpacking the legal constraints related to maintaining the house on one level and the often-overlooked concerns of aging-in-place and isolation, the home becomes both a typological reinvention and a study in meaningful solitude.

Building on the home’s original foundation to retain the non-confirming footprint, the design reinterpreted the traditional form by flipping the plan, shifting and bisecting the gable, which was transformed into a 35-foot long clerestory, and connecting the house to a previously disused side yard.

The once introverted and minimal house is filled with light and air, imbuing the spaces with the passage of time in the changes of colour and shadow, and through these enduring connections to outside larger world, it provides the inhabitant a refuge that embodies solitude without loneliness.