Muskoka Modern Boathouse
Muskoka, Ontario
THE BOATHOUSE
A two-storey structure designed around the water.
Our clients needed more than a covered slip. They wanted a proper gathering space above the dock — somewhere the whole family could land at the end of a day on the lake. The program was compact: one boathouse slip below, an open living room above, and a rooftop deck facing the water. We designed it to sit quietly on the shoreline, dark-clad and timber-detailed, as if it had always been there.
INSPIRATION & MATERIALS
Dark timber, standing seam, and the treeline.
The reference point was simple: a working boathouse, refined. We looked to the traditional Muskoka boathouse — board and batten, boat slips, the rooftop sundeck — and asked how to reinterpret those elements in a contemporary material language. Dark-stained cedar cladding. Charcoal standing-seam steel roofing. Timber exposed at the eaves and the upper-level soffit. The palette recedes into the landscape and lets the lake do the work.
Dark-Stained Cedar
Standing-Seam Steel
Exposed Timber Eaves
Ink & Cream Interior
DESIGN PROCESS
From first concept to built form.
The design evolved through three phases: massing study, permit drawings, and final renderings. We modelled the structure against the shoreline setback, tested roofline heights relative to the treeline, and iterated the upper-level glazing to balance open water views with privacy from passing boats. The result is a building that reads as a single, disciplined move — one material, one roof pitch, one clear gesture toward the shoreline.
01 — Massing
02 — Renderings
03 — As Built
MUSKOKA MODERN COMPOUND
Continue the tour.
Three structures. One property. The complete Muskoka Modern compound.
A site, a brief, a long conversation.
Tell us about your shoreline, your boathouse, and what you want from the water. We’ll take it from there.
