A wooden boardwalk leads inside this timber-clad gym and spa building, designed by MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects to accompany a residence on Nova Scotia's Atlantic coast (+ slideshow).

MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple ? whose founder Brian MacKay-Lyons won Canada's most prestigious architecture award in 2015 ? designed the small wooden building to accompany the two blocks that make up House 22, which the firm completed in 1998.

The single-storey block is cuboidal in form and is clad in cedar boards, mirroring the materiality of the existing house and guesthouse. But unlike these two blocks, which sit on the hilltop, the new building stands on the edge of a wood.

"The previous two pavilions are rustic hemlock boxes floating above two agrarian hilltops," said the studio. "They are precisely aligned in both plan and section."
"This new, third pavilion is sited and experienced very differently, below the others and tucked into the edge of the forest, facing a field, before the sea," it added.

Related story: Brian MacKay-Lyons wins 2015 RAIC Gold Medal

"[It] is conceived as a monolithic block of wood, carved to form interior spaces."

The wooden boardwalk extends across an uneven terrain of mosses and boulders to provide access to the spa. It leads in via a glazed porch, conceived by the architects as a "bite" out of the facade.

Inside, a sauna and wet room are located on one side, while the othe...