A Place They’ll Come Back To

My exploration of a multi-generational sanctuary in the Rideau Lakes

By JACOB KIRST

President & Visionary, Lagois Design·Build·Renovate

I’ve been sketching an idea lately that has become much more personal than I expected.

It began as an architectural exercise. I was playing around with the idea of several small pavilions tucked into the trees, connected by paths, with a place to gather, a cabin for the kids, a barn and a quieter space for Sabrina and me.

This is my basic idea: a collection of places. It’s fairly simple.

Instead of putting everything under one roof, there would be a collection of smaller buildings, each with its own purpose, all woven into the landscape.

At its heart would be the “Gather Pavilion”. That’s where everyone would come together, to the kitchen, the fireplace, the big table. It would be the place for morning coffee, breakfast, Thanksgiving dinner, a drink at the end of the day, late-night conversations. In the summer, the doors would be open and people could wander in and out.

There would be a smaller pavilion for Sabrina and me, a cabin for the kids and, eventually, perhaps, another space for guests or extended family or whoever becomes part of our story.

The pavilions would be connected by the land, by the paths between them. Those paths would be important. If you had to walk from one building to another, you’d be outside. You’d notice whether it was cold or warm. You’d smell the forest. You’d see what changed since yesterday. In the winter, you’d hear the snow under your boots. In the fall, you’d walk through leaves.

You wouldn’t walk down a hallway to see your kids. You’d walk through the trees.

And those small walks would create opportunities for things to happen. Sometimes they would take seconds. Other times they might be a chance to stop at the firepit and chat. Maybe another person would join in.

You don’t design those moments, exactly. You create the conditions for them. That’s one of the things I like most about this idea.

The more I think about it, the more I realize I‘m not really designing buildings in this exercise. I’m imagining a place my children might someday bring their children back to.

I keep thinking about what might happen here over the next 30 or 40 years. I picture my boys grown up, bringing their own families back for a weekend. I see kids running down to the water, someone calling everyone in for dinner, people sitting around a fire when they should have gone to bed an hour ago.

I could, of course, put everything into one building. I could build a beautiful lake house with a big kitchen, a great room, bedrooms for everyone and a view of the water. It would be comfortable and practical, and there would be plenty of room for everyone.

But that idea doesn’t quite capture what I’m searching for. I’m interested in something different. I want my children to remember some day what it felt like to be here.

I want them to remember waking up in their cabin and walking through the trees for breakfast. The smell of the pines after rain. The sound of gravel under their feet. Running down to the water and coming back hungry. Sitting around the fire after dinner and realizing it’s somehow 11 o’clock.

I like the idea of giving them just enough independence to feel as though their cabin is their place, but with the comfort of knowing we’re only steps away.

There would be a barn. I like the idea that it would be the practical heart of life in the country. Boats, fishing gear, tools, machines and whatever projects happen to be underway would all have a home there as evidence that this isn’t a property you’re only supposed to stand back and admire. It would be a place you’d actually use. It would show some wear. It would look as though people actually live here.

When I think about the places I remember from my own childhood, I don’t remember their square footage. When you think of a treasured childhood, you think of the dock, the trail through the woods, the rock everyone climbed, the chair Grandpa always sat in. You remember the smell of the fireplace and the soft sound as the screen door shut and where everyone sat at breakfast.

As a designer and builder, I spend a lot of time thinking about dimensions and materials and how a house functions. But a meaningful home is measured differently, and that’s what I want to design: something my children’s children will know.

This is where the idea becomes emotional for me – when I picture my boys as adults, even though it’s hard to imagine because they’re so little now. Maybe they’ll have their own careers, their own homes and their own busy lives. Maybe they’ll have families of their own. I have no idea where they’ll live or how often we’ll all manage to be together, but I want to get ready for that now.

I’d like a place that keeps drawing them back, a place where they will know which path leads to the water, or the best fishing spot, which pavilion gets the morning sun and which floorboard makes a noise when you step on it.

It would be a place where they know where Dad keeps the tools and where Mom likes to sit with her coffee.

It would be a place that would make them proud. I can hear them saying “This was our cabin”, or “Grandpa built this”, or “We used to run down this path every morning.”

On the other hand, I wouldn’t like the place to feel too precious. I want materials that can take some abuse and become better with age. Stone that weathers. Timber that changes colour. Floors that can handle kids and wet feet.

I want the trees to grow around the buildings until, 30 years from now, it’s hard to imagine the pavilions without them. There should be scratches. There should be repairs.

And at some point, my kids will probably change something I designed because they have a better idea. And that’s fine, because if the property is still exactly as I designed it decades from now, I’ll probably wonder whether we ever really lived here.

A family place should change as the family changes. Each generation should be able to add something to it. It should have luxury, but luxury in a different way than I have always understood it.

Luxury means superb architecture, beautiful materials and great craftsmanship, of course; they’re a big part of what I do, and I’ll always care about them. But I think ultimate luxury is having enough land that your kids can disappear into the woods for an afternoon. It’s having enough privacy to hear nothing at night. It’s a small cabin that feels entirely your own. It’s a fireplace that everyone ends up gathering around, or a table that somehow seems to get more crowded every year.

Luxury might be walking outside with a coffee in the morning and watching your family slowly emerge from different buildings through the trees. That feels like a pretty good life to me. It’s not more house. It’s more life.

I sometimes think about what this place might look like long after I’m gone. I hope nobody is standing around talking about how many square feet we built. I hope they’re using it.

I hope there are kids jumping off the dock, someone making breakfast and somebody looking for a missing shoe. I hope fishing rods are leaning against a wall where they shouldn’t be, and there’s laughter coming from one of the cabins. I hope the buildings have aged, the trees are bigger, and the paths are worn into the landscape…with everyone knowing where they lead.

My goal is to create a sanctuary for my family to live, gather and make memories together, a place my children will inherit; but more importantly, a place they’ll want to come back to.

If that happens, the pavilions would be something I could never have simply designed on paper. They would be a piece of our family’s history.

… in pursuit of Perfecting the Art of Living^®.