East of Montreal and close to the Vermont border, North Hatley, Quebec, has long beckoned creative types and those seeking a refined break from urban life. The village is one of a handful that dot the edges of Lake Massawippi, a pristine finger of deep, blue water. The region has always offered a slower rhythm of life along its sparkling shores.
Architect James Macgillivray spent summer vacations in North Hatley with his Montreal family during his youth. He recalls playing on the grounds at Virgin Vineyard, exploring the ruins of its dilapidated barn above the lake. As he lay in the loft contemplating the sky through a gaping hole in the barn’s roof, little did he know the experience would later inform a thoughtful, poetic architectural expression on the same site.
Those sensory childhood experiences on the land were rekindled in 2019 when a client came to their first meeting carrying a copy of Andy Goldsworthy’s “Wall,” a monograph about his meandering stone wall installation in upstate New York. The book, the memories, the land’s visible history, and the client’s request for a multi-generational home all seemed to point toward one idea.
“We thought that a wall could be a piece of architecture that animates the house,” said Macgillivray, who designed the house along with his partner, architect Wei-Han Vivian Lee, OAA, AIA.
Together, they form Lee and Macgillivray Architecture Studio Ltd., or LAMAS. The Toronto-based architects practice across Canada and the U.S., where their work—both residential and commercial—blends high-tech precision with a fascination for ornament, color, and the optical effects of built form.
The design of Virgin Vineyard House grew from this wall almost as organically as moss. The house settles into the hillside so naturally, it feels as though the slope rose around it. The wall functions to separate the house from the historic vineyard road, which is now a well-used public footpath. It also grounds the modern design historically in the region, an aspect that is important to Macgillivray and Lee.
“We always research and reference vernacular traditional houses. And in Quebec, they take heritage architecture very seriously,” Macgillivray said. It’s notable that North Hatley has a significant Anglo influence due to its founding by United Empire Loyalists who relocated from New England after the American Declaration of Independence.
“We try to tease out the strange things from history—details that are less predictable,” Macgillivray added. “In an old architecture encyclopedia, we came across images of peaked party walls [stone walls dividing conjoined living spaces] in urban settings in Montreal, and a weird shape captivated us.”
The concept began to take shape, giving the team elements that would root the project in its place without blindly replicating tradition. This modern home would reimagine old stone forms not as boundary, but as anchor—both literal and figurative.
The plan unfolded along the stone wall. Three generations would need private spaces and generous communal space, and each space would ideally optimize views toward the lake. A linear plan made sense, but this house stretched 166 feet—not exactly typical proportions. The LAMAS team saw the length as a practical and aesthetic advantage.
“We love the idea that the house is too long, really, to be comfortably absorbed in a single view. It allowed us to create these little visual events that would happen as your eyes follow along the facade,” Macgillivray said.
The architects explored the facade as a composition, placing forms and implied lines like a painter would compose a canvas. The result is a sequence of architectural moments: rhythmic upright windows, a trapezoidal void over a courtyard, a defined entry, and a semi-circular window that sweeps up to an “absurdly large” chimney. The throughline is the randomly stacked stone, whose ancient patina provides a tactile counterpoint to the home’s modern geometry.
The tall chimney appeared in the second draft, after the local planning department weighed in on the design. The municipality saw the straight run of 166 feet of metal roofing as too monolithic. The planning department’s critique led to a welcome revision: a massive chimney that echoed the offbeat vernacular forms the team had studied. The striking vertical mass broke up the expanse of roofing and added just the right amount of quirkiness to the house.
The basic roofline gives the impression of a straightforward plan, but the genius lies within, where each room is set at a 10-degree angle to face the lake view, with a staggered arrangement that creates private pockets on the exterior and a greater sense of privacy inside. The design generates some artistic tension on the southern facade, with the roofline driving its straight path over sawtooth walls and shaded patio spaces beneath.
Inside, the layout offers a sense of ease and structure, with rooms organized orthogonally within the building’s dynamic envelope. There are only a few small spaces where the juxtaposition of the two main axes is apparent. One is the entry courtyard on the north side, where visitors first meet the stone wall—an enigmatic threshold that conceals a quiet, open-air courtyard. Inside, the stone wall permeates the small foyer but warm wood dominates. Macgillivray explained that the entry concept is designed to postpone the gratification of the light and landscape.
“You enter to a blank wall, not the view—it’s about delay and discovery,” Macgillivray said.
The compressed foyer ushers visitors toward the openness of the living and dining space, with its wide window wall. Natural light pours in from both sides, thanks to the opening in the roof over the courtyard to the north. The meadow-to-lake view seems endless from the living space due to the delicate framing of the window wall.
“We’re very familiar with light wood framing,” Macgillivray said. “But this was the first time that we used a structural wood window system.”
The black spruce curtain wall is made in Quebec, and it’s engineered to allow thin mullions to support a header beam, eliminating the need for thick support columns that would interrupt the view. Each mullion is eight inches deep but only about two-and-a-half inches wide. It gives the space a weightless feeling.
That mood of light transparency dominates the view side of the home, in contrast to the strength of the heavy wall at the back. The interior finishes reflect the airiness coming through the glassy side of the house. Wood is the predominant material, combined with a lot of off-white drywall that lends a crisp, sculptural effect. Exposed beams lend a raw, honest feel, while wide-plank floors and touches of honed slate tile keep the palette neutral and warm.
Although the interior design looks quite restrained, it works as a balance to the rather outlandish concept and unconventional layout. The clients were some of the most adventurous for LAMAS, and the opportunity marked a shift in their process. They involved more staff and capitalized on the trust that their client placed in their ideas. As Macgillivray put it, the best clients understand that the value of hiring LAMAS is to create something that doesn’t already exist.
Near the end of the design process, the team realized that they had space to create an upper-level hideaway with a deck overlooking the vineyard and lake. It’s a loft-like room that brings in the dreamy views through a clean, geometric hole carved into the roof.
“The roof has kind of been removed—in a way, it’s like the hayloft we used to sneak into as kids,” Macgillivray said.
Those elements of play and memory merge with a strong sense of origin and a commitment to family life in this project. It manages to provide a place for modern living shaped by memory, stone, and the enduring soul of Virgin Vineyard.
First published in Great Lakes By Design: Crafted Lodging, Volume 9, Issue 3
Text: Diane Kolak