Atelier Carle Builds a Shared Laurentian Retreat for Two Friends Behind Board-Formed Concrete Walls

SONO House is a secondary residence on a forested mountainside in Wentworth-Nord, in Québec's Laurentians, designed by Atelier Carle for two friends who share the property but want to keep their independence. Completed in 2025, the house stretches along the slope in a folded, origami-like arrangement of volumes. Three long board-formed concrete walls guard the approach from the south, and a hemlock frame opens the living spaces to the north.

What interests us is how literally the house builds the brief. "Managed distance" between two owners is usually solved in plan, with separate wings and a shared kitchen. Atelier Carle extends the idea to the whole site. The walls make you wait before you arrive, the folds of the plan keep the two parts of the house apart, and the northern glazing gives both occupants the same long view. The building treats distance as a material to shape, and the landscape does much of that work.

Walls Scaled to the Mountain, Not the Body

The approach is a gravel path running between concrete walls of varying heights, ending at a narrow gap that serves as the entrance. The walls are deliberately oversized for the people walking past them. They are sized against the hillside, and that is why they work: the house announces itself as a piece of ground before it reads as a dwelling.

The horizontal board-forming is meant to recall the stratified bedrock of the region. In a lesser project that gesture would be decorative. Here the walls also retain the snow and water that run down the mountain, so the reference to geology comes with a real job. The low retaining wall and small path lights in the forest edge show the same logic at a smaller scale.

The Threshold as a Courtyard

Once you pass through the gap, the concrete gives way to a gravel court where the house finally turns toward you. At twilight the fireplace room glows through the glass, and after the closed, silent walls that moment of warmth feels earned. It is a simple sequence of compression and release, and it is handled with patience.

Where two timber-clad volumes meet at a corner, glazed doors open directly onto the court beside a stand of birch. This is where the folded plan becomes clear. Each angle sets up a separate edge and a separate door, so two people can come and go without crossing paths. That matters more in a shared house than any single room.

Hemlock from Down the Road

Away from the concrete, the house switches to hemlock for both its structure and its north façade cladding, and the timber came from a nearby site. Atelier Carle worked with a local carpenter and a structural engineer. That collaboration shows in the slatted openings and the plain detailing of the timber wings, which sit behind boulders and tree trunks instead of competing with them.

The pairing of materials is clear without being heavy-handed. Concrete holds the uphill side, where the mountain pushes against the house. Timber takes the open side, where the house leans toward the view. You can read the site's forces from the material change alone.

A Pavilion Turned Toward Northern Light

Seen from the wildflower meadow below, SONO House barely resembles its entry façade. The main volumes face north, with full-height glazing between timber columns and a flat roof that steps with the terraced section. The south end is a windowless concrete wall. The north side is almost entirely glass.

Choosing north over south in a cold climate is a debatable call, and we would want to know more about how the house performs in a Laurentian January. The architectural reasoning is clear, though. Diffuse northern light is steady and free of glare, and it falls on a forested hillside rather than an open horizon. The trees reflected in the glass at dusk show what the house is for: framing pieces of a wide panorama instead of consuming it all at once.

Living Behind the Glass Line

At night the relationship reverses, and the timber-framed living and dining room becomes a lantern on the slope. The round pendant and dining table glow through the floor-to-ceiling glazing, while the columns keep a rhythm that stops the glass wall from feeling like a shop window.

Inside, the polished concrete floor carries the material of the approach walls into the domestic space, and the open glazed doors let the forest come right up to the sofa. Even the dog seems to understand the plan: the threshold between inside and out is thin on this side of the house, almost casual.

Hearth, Table and Timber

The black wood stove sits on a raised concrete hearth between weathered timber posts, with tall windows onto the misty trees behind it. It is the clearest example of the house's material grammar in a single frame. Concrete is used where heat and weight are involved, timber where the structure rises, and glass where the landscape takes over.

The dining area keeps things plain: a long wooden table, a paper pendant and exposed timber joists overhead. Shared spaces in a house built around independence need to be generous without demanding togetherness. This room manages that through its proportions and its view, not through any statement furniture.

Green Cabinetry and Reclaimed Planks

The olive green kitchen, with full-height cabinets and an open-shelf island, is the one place where the interior takes a chromatic risk. The color works because it mirrors the canopy outside, and the corner glazing lets the kitchen open fully onto the landscape. A timber post in the foreground keeps the structure present even in the most functional room.

The bedrooms are quieter, finished in reclaimed plank wainscot, with corner windows that look straight into the foliage. Reclaimed timber gives the interiors a patina that new construction usually lacks. Together with a layout meant to adapt over time, it suggests a house expected to age with its owners rather than be renovated away from them.

Plans and Drawings

The site plans show more clearly than the photographs how the angled footprint follows the contours, with thick retaining walls on the uphill side and a curving path working around the trees. The folded geometry reads as a response to the topography as much as to the brief.

The two elevations sum up the project's double character. One is long and low, with solid wall panels and only a few openings, set on rising ground. The other is a continuous glazed façade with a regular column rhythm under a flat roof. Two very different faces on one building, and each is honest about the side of the mountain it faces.

Why This Project Matters

Alain Carle has lectured on landscape as an opening onto a site's specificity, and SONO House turns that idea into a working building. The walls handle snow and runoff, reference the bedrock and choreograph arrival all at once. The hemlock comes from nearby. The orientation favors the quality of light over raw solar gain. Each decision ties back to this particular slope, which is the opposite of the imported, view-maximizing chalet typology common in Québec's cottage country.

The project also offers a useful model for a type of housing we will see more of: properties shared by friends, not families, where privacy has to be designed instead of assumed. Atelier Carle does not solve that with a duplex or a party wall. It uses sequence, folding and landscape to create distance, and the result is a house that two people can share without feeling like they are compromising.

SONO House by Atelier Carle, Wentworth-Nord, Québec, Canada, completed 2025. Photography by Félix Michaud.

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