MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Builds Hilltop Cottage as a Memorial to an Engagement

Hilltop Cottage stands on the exact spot where its owners got engaged, and Halifax firm MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects designed the shingle-clad pavilion as a memorial to that commitment.

The house sits in the Canadian province of New Brunswick, on the east coast, yet its forms would feel equally at home in Scotland, Wales, or Ireland. Its materiality nods to traditional cottage construction — thick walls, a hipped roof — while producing something the architects consider entirely new in its typology.

The large roof presents a monolithic form reminiscent of a stone building, while sliding timber doors propose a more intimate, cabin-like quality. MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple describes the design's purpose as creating a place of reflection and inspiration for the owners, who declared their lifetime commitment to each other on the site.

Restraint drove the process. 'However, the biggest challenge was continually editing the design toward a pure, simple statement, resisting the temptation to over-design,' the architects explain. They achieved this through local materials, including local fieldstone and wood doors, and by leaning into the vernacular language of historic Scottish shielings and Irish tower houses.

One historical reference came from closer to home in the architectural canon. The architects studied the 1962 Orinda House by Charles Moore to create a 'house within a house'. 'The centralised plan creates a grounded sense of protection, while carefully placed openings offer expansive views of the landscape,' they tell Wallpaper*. 'The uninterrupted corner window is particularly powerful: sheltered from the sun and rain, you still feel completely immersed in the landscape. It creates a true experience of refuge and prospect.'

The section and envelope work in layers. Retracted openings reveal a deep overhang, and the sliding doors add another layer to peel back. Two skylights above prevent the space from feeling dark and enclosed. The result operates as both refuge and viewing platform for observing the surrounding nature.

The sensory ambitions extend to scent and breeze. 'We wanted to create an elevated sensory experience,' the architects explain. 'When in use, the cottage's window walls open completely to nature, allowing the summer breeze and the scent of the meadow to mingle with the natural cedar, creating an immediate sense of comfort. This is combined with an expansive view of the river valley. The commitment to an all-wood palette, particularly cedar, creates a warm and immersive experience that is shared by anyone who enters.'

Hilltop Cottage demonstrates how tightly edited vernacular references — a Celtic monolithic roof, Canadian timber cabinetry, a Moore-era centralized plan — can produce a building that reads as both rooted and unprecedented, and it suggests the memorial brief may be an undervaluted driver of residential typology.