Rabbit Snare Gorge - The Views From This Cape Breton Cottage Are Amazing!

Modern Cottage Design in a Scenic Location

The Rabbit Snare Gorge is a modern cottage design that sits on a remote Cape Breton Island location with beautiful views of the ocean. The home was designed by New York collective Design Base 8 using the area's existing building typologies to inspire the shape and the building materials for the tall three-storey home design. The design group worked with the Halifax-based architect Gandhi, who had previously completed a wood cabin for two artists in the same area. The stunning cabin building uses plates of weathered steel to frame the tall doorway to the timber-clad cottage home. Architects from Design Base 8 and Omar Gandhi designed this modern cabin for a remote site on Canada's Cape Breton Island. The cabin building was built for an arborist and an outdoor pursuits enthusias. The cabin gets its name from the rugged landscape of Rabbit Snare Gorge. The cabin building is located on a 46-acre piece of land on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.

Emphasizing Natural Light and Efficient Design

The modern cabin building has open views that follow the path of the sun, emphasizing the interior spaces, and accentuating the verticality of the tower. The modern cabin building is clad in locally sourced timber and features a gabled roof that allows it to easily shed snow and rainwater. The home has rust-colored weathered steel that is used around the doorway, reaching all the way up to the second storey to provide a sheltered entrance. The cabin buildings steel entry hoop takes its shape from the entry windbreaks that are unique to the Cape Breton and Newfoundland coastal communities.

The Benefits of Sustainable Timber

There are several benefits of using sustainable and responsibly-sourced timber in your home building projects. Wood is a great insulator, with excellent thermal properties, low thermal conductivity and high thermal mass. This means that cabin buildings that are made from sustainable wood are also more efficient to cooling and heat, reducing the carbon footprint of a building over its lifetime even further. Using wood that is locally sourced benefits the community where you live.

Lower Environmental Impact of Wood Materials

Wood that is sustainably sourced takes less energy to produce than other building materials and wood building materials have low embodied energy. This means that the amount of energy that is used in the production and the transport of wood is lower than alternatives such as concrete, steel, or brick. This reduces the overall carbon footprint of your building project. The unique properties of timber also allow you to be creative in home design as sustainable wood has properties that other building materials are unable to replicate. This means that cabin buildings and other structures built from timber can be designed in unique ways that simply aren't possible with other building materials.

Positive Impact on Forests and Biodiversity

Sustainable wood products come from forests that are well-managed, where new trees are planted to replace the trees that are harvested. Planting new trees means that there will be even more CO2 stored, which makes sustainable timber building products better than carbon neutral. Sustainable wood can be used for everything from timber decking to sheet materials, garden sheds and timber doors. Well-managed forests also have a positive impact on the biodiversity in an area, helping to ensure that animals and plants are protected.