Shobac Cottages is a farm by the sea built on historic village ruins on Canada’s Nova Scotia south shore, offering vacation rentals of four unique cottages, several houses and an octagonal barn.

Brain says: „For an architect, building is a way of studying the land, by palpating, by proposing things. You study and understand it more that way. It started as a kind of international architecture laboratory. We built temporary buildings, recycling them, a little bit like Burning Man, and we’d have a huge community party with bagpipes, and as many as 1,000 people would come. Then we thought about sustainability, so we thought to build some permanent buildings. We built the cottages, a tower, a studio and reconstructed a historic brown barn and other barns where we keep sheep and horses.”

Like the historic extended family farm that was here, now there are barnyards and courtyards and microclimates made within the landscape.

The idea was to try to make a prototype for a modest dwelling in the landscape, touching the land lightly. Learning from the vernacular building traditions, making microclimates and using the wood material culture that existed here from the ship building traditions, the architect came up with the idea of buildings like boats. If you’re in one of the cottages, you might get a sense that you’re on a fishing boat.