A multi-use wood-frame building in Montmagny, Quebec, includes a private courtyard designed to optimize daylight and natural ventilation for residents. A ground-level commercial space addresses the main throughfare, and parking is tucked under the back volume.
Quebec City-based BoON Architecture began as a residential studio in 2016. According to associate Jean-Nicolas Bouchard, who joined in 2021, this still informs the way the team approaches the now larger and more complex projects they take on: they listen, they work together, and they take action (?l?écoute, la collaboration, l?action?). As a young firm, they welcome working within constraints to realize big ideas for small budgets, but they?ve also established themselves enough that prospective clients are already on-board with their eco-design ethos. Environmentally sustainable architecture is at the core of BoON Architecture?s mission. The team works to consciously mitigate risks like toxicity, flooding, and forest fire damage, and to reduce the ecological impact of their projects. Of BoON?s sixteen studio members, four have LEED credentials, four have Passive House certification, and four more have completed Passive House training; the studio as a whole is B Corp certified.
Bouchard explains that their focus goes beyond energy models and carbon calculations, by considering the inherently social dimension of the environment?embracing a contextual, holistic, and multi-scalar approach. Their design method is, as he p...