Project Name: Percy Lake Cottage

Location: Percy Lake, Ontario, Canada

Design Team: Michael Taylor Architecture + Design

Building Area: 2,800 sq ft

Completion Year: 2024

Image Copyright: Tom Arban

Design Features: Canadian studio Michael Taylor Architecture + Design has completed Percy Lake Cottage, a one-storey retreat dug into a granite slope above Ontario's Percy Lake that disappears from the road while opening fully toward the water.

The 2,800-square-foot cottage occupies a heavily wooded shoreline site near Algonquin Park, where exposed Canadian Shield granite runs through the property and informed both the architecture and the surrounding landscape.

Working from a single brief, that the cottage stay out of view from the nearby road, the architects excavated six feet below the original grade and left the existing rock face standing between the building and the road, turning it into a planted embankment. The entrance sits low and screened behind this rise, with only a stone chimney and the dark, overhanging roofline visible to passing cars.

Three separate volumes step back from one another to maximise daylight and views across the lake. A wing for visiting guests, with two bedrooms and a screened porch, sits toward the entrance. At the centre, a great room combines living, dining and kitchen space beneath a glazed wall framing the water beyond, while opposing windows allow cross-ventilation in summer; a radiant floor and a wood-burning fireplace, wrapped in blackened steel, provide heat in winter. The principal bedroom occupies its own wing, connected by a glazed corridor.

Dark wood cladding lets the cottage recede into the tree line, while a Douglas fir ceiling runs continuously from the great room out past the glazing and under the deep overhangs into the screened porch. Large-format porcelain tile, detailed to resemble poured concrete, covers the floors throughout.

Toronto's The Brothers Dressler supplied a solid walnut dining table and a reclaimed-wood chandelier, while landscaping by Mark Hartley Landscape Architects kept disturbance to the site's trees and granite outcrops to a minimum, adding only stone steps to the water and a handful of relocated boulders to form terraces.

Design Team: Michael Taylor Architecture + Design is a Toronto-based residential studio founded by architect Michael Taylor, building on the legacy of Taylor Smyth Architects, the 25-year-old practice he co-founded in 2000. Taylor holds a Master of Architecture from Harvard University's Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chicago, and is a registered member of the Ontario Association of Architects and the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.

Over the past three decades, Taylor has led more than 25 highly customised residential projects across Canada and abroad, alongside numerous community, educational and workplace commissions, working closely with studio architects Marco Bonatti and Brian Harmer. The practice treats architecture and interior design as a single integrated discipline, with Taylor personally involved from the earliest client conversations through to the completion of construction.

The firm's work has received more than 25 awards for design excellence, including three Ontario Association of Architects awards and a Toronto Urban Design Award for the Market Street redevelopment at St. Lawrence Market, alongside recognition from the International Property Awards and the Architecture MasterPrize. Recent residential commissions include Russell Hill Road Residence, House on the Bluffs, Lake House and Borealis Lodge, reflecting a continued focus on custom houses, additions, and rural and waterfront cottage properties across Ontario.