Project Name: Maison de la Pointe

Location: Magog, Canada

Design Team: YH2 Architecture

Floor Area: 3,700 ft² (approx. 344 m²)

Year of Completion: 2022

Photography: Maxime Brouillet

Design Features: Nestled on the tapered shores of Lake Memphremagog in Magog, Canada, Maison de la Pointe by Montreal-based YH2 Architecture is a masterful meditation on memory, restraint, and architectural dialogue. Completed in 2022, this 3,700-square-foot residence confronts one of contemporary architecture's most compelling dilemmas: what to do when a beloved heritage structure no longer serves its inhabitants, yet remains too meaningful to demolish.

Rather than erasing the original mid-twentieth-century summer cottage or overwhelming it with an extension, YH2 conceived an elegant dual-pavilion strategy. The historic chalet is preserved at the water's edge, its familiar silhouette intact, while a new compact pavilion is discreetly embedded into the natural slope of the land behind it. The two structures are united by a fully glazed passageway, a luminous threshold that simultaneously separates and connects past and present.

The genius of the scheme lies in its careful orchestration of contrast and continuity. The lakeside pavilion, now reimagined as the master suite and living quarters, retains its original morphology while opening up dramatically within. Soaring vaulted ceilings, inspired by the arches of the original veranda, transform a modest cottage interior into a generous, light-filled sanctuary. The new pavilion, housing bedrooms, a living room, a study, and a garage, speaks a quieter architectural language, deferring gracefully to its historic counterpart. Similar in scale and materiality yet distinct in composition and expression, the two pavilions engage in a thoughtful architectural conversation across time. Maison de la Pointe is not a nostalgic gesture nor a radical rupture; it is a sophisticated act of architectural stewardship that honours the past while embracing the present with quiet confidence.

Design Team: Founded in Montreal in 1994 by architects Marie-Claude Hamelin and Loukas Yiacouvakis, YH2 Architecture has established itself as one of Canada's most consistently celebrated design practices over three decades of rigorous work. Guided by the conviction that architecture is fundamentally the art of place-making, the firm approaches each commission as a creative and transformative act, reinventing reality through disciplined spatial thinking and formal composition.

Under the continued leadership of its two founding principals, both graduates of the Universite de Montreal's School of Architecture, YH2 operates with a deliberately focused portfolio. Loukas Yiacouvakis undertook formative internships with architects Melvin Charney and Mario Biocca, developing an acute sensibility for urban study and site-responsive design. Marie-Claude Hamelin participated in a course led by Daniel Libeskind in Italy and completed an architectural internship at the University of Israel, a cross-cultural academic foundation that informs her nuanced approach to form and context.

This selective approach allows the team to dedicate sustained attention to every dimension of a project, from site integration and conceptual development through to construction documentation, architectural detailing, interior design, and object design. Within this methodology, every element is considered integral to the overall compositional logic; nothing is incidental. The firm has received numerous awards from the Ordre des Architectes du Quebec, the Grands Prix du Design, and international design competitions across residential, commercial, and hospitality typologies. Projects such as Wooden Blocks, Maison Kirsh, and Maison de la Pointe exemplify YH2's capacity to balance conceptual ambition with material precision, producing architecture that is both contextually grounded and formally distinguished.