Cabot Cliffs: Cliffs Residences, Halfway Hut and Pro Shop

Located on the rugged west coast of Cape Breton Island, close to the town of Inverness, overlooking the Gulf of St Lawrence with tumbling sandy cliffs, and sweeping ocean views, Cabot Cliffs is among the most celebrated golf destinations in the world. Links is the oldest style of golf, and this links course is laid out along the sandy soil that separates the land from the sea at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw crafted this walking-only course in the dramatic landscape to experience the topography, views, vegetation, and wind, in tandem with the game itself. The design of such a course demands a profound sensitivity to the terrain; and the architecture at Cabot Cliffs echoes this sentiment with its relationship between landscape, building, and human play.

Sensitivity is vital when building within a community that was once home to the 19th and 20th-century coal-mining activity in the area. The demise of the coal industry destroyed the livelihood of the town and left a contaminated landscape. The Cabot golf courses (Links and Cliffs), and the associated tourist economy, have brought employment to the region that enables young people to stay in Cape Breton during the summer months. The development of the architecture bolsters the community’s resilience by creating a year-round construction industry. Wood construction is very much part of the vernacular of rural Cape Breton and this material selection allowed the buildings to be constructed from local products, by local tradespeople, to embed the project in the town’s economy.

The brief for the project was to design eight seasonal holiday homes with 4–5-bedroom suites, a Halfway Hut to provide refreshment along the course, and a Pro Shop. Additional buildings, including 2–3-bedroom homes, a restaurant, and a thermal bath are to be added in the future. To allow for the seamless addition of these future programs, an incremental and adaptable approach to the architecture was adopted. This allows for a sustainable model of growth—both economically and ecologically—while offering flexibility and diversity within the architecture without repetition.

A matrix of typological forms was developed to create a kit of parts comprised of single-storey gabled sheds, bedrooms and kitchen/living/dinning rooms joined together by flat interstitial roofs. The forms are arranged in various combinations and orientations, creating unique dwellings that sit playfully on the site while remaining similar in materiality and scale. Cedar shingle walls and galvalume roofs scatter across the sand dune and fescue grass landscape. Black masonry fireplaces punctuate the horizon providing cozy spaces to watch the course while linking the earth to the vast sky. The result is a village, rooted within the vernacular forms of Nova Scotia—complete with sheltered courtyards and intimate pathways that frame views of the ocean while tempering the expansive and rugged setting. These in-between shared spaces become an extension of the golf landscape rather than solely for the use of the individual homes. During the winter, outside of the golf season, the pathways form a network of hiking, cross-country skiing, and snowshoeing trails.

The planting around the homes is an extension of the links landscape and considered as part of the larger ecosystem, proactively mitigating coastal dune erosion by using marram grass for land stabilization. Drought-tolerant fescue grass reduces the need for intensive irrigation—one of the problems with golf courses. In fact, watering is performed with a hand watering hose to decrease the usage. The attention of Cabot to land, water, wildlife, and other natural resources through environmental stewardship has been recognized through the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program for Golf Courses.

The fractal arrangement of the forms betrays the intimacy of each dwelling. The houses’ interiors offer a rich spatial experience where the corridors linking spaces expand into full-height gabled volumes that bring daylight into gathering and sleeping spaces. The communal kitchen/living/dining create dynamic social spaces while each home is oriented to provide privacy with doors and windows that open to refreshing ocean breezes and decks.

Cabot Cliffs has always been about celebrating the simple joys of fresh air, nature, views, and play. These single-storey buildings spill outside making each structure ‘in’ and ‘of’ the landscape and blurring the boundary between inside and outside. The modern aesthetic of the homes underscores the idea that a large house can still feel like an airy seaside cottage and, when combined thoughtfully, create a village at the edge of the ocean.