hilborn-house: Hilborn House, Cambridge, Ontario, Canada
Designed 1974
The Hilborn property drops from a road outside Preston, Ontario, down a slope of pines and maple to a narrow benchland and from there another sixty feet to the river. The outlook on nearly all sides was to the tamed and gentle countryside of Eastern Canada.
A series of terraces between vertical wall panels of brick march rhythmically across the site. They hold the horizontal roof planes, terraces, and trellises that step up the hill. Everything else is glass.
From the approach one can descend over the roof which hold upper gardens, or into the house stepping down through the long lateral tubes of space which terrace down the hillside to the benchland. These ‘tubes’ have walls and floors of brick and ceilings of wood slats the same width as the brick. With ceilings penetrated only by the plastic-roofed garden court and swimming pool, the walls continue on until the last brick terrace releases itself to the forest. The piers extend into the landscape beyond the limits of enclosure reinforcing the layered fall of the land. The trellises also extend the space, releasing it gradually as does the structure in giving way and dissolving into the landscape somewhat like a ruin.
Photo by Geoffrey Erickson
