This project was completed in the fall of 2000. The requirement was to build a house for a lock keeper on the Lachine canal. The project began with the creation of a client and selection of a site anywhere along the water's edge. The program was to suit the needs of the created person and their family as well as relate to the site and the context of the canal, a waterway often forgotten by the city.

The client I selected was a professional photographer who was a lock keeper only as an observer. He lead a dual existence, lock keeper by day and photographer by night. He liked to keep each part of his identity secret from the other. Being fascinated by the deception an appearance can have, he liked the control and power of knowing there was more to him than met the eye.

His house was built in an existing small industrial building located on a site set over 100 metres back from the canal. The house was situated at the base of St. Henri, a working class neighbourhood bordering the industrial zone along the canal.

The concept of the design was based on the intersection of two structural languages, the existing walls of the house and a new grid generating the second story/private spaces. This rigid geometry was extended into the landscape in the form of square stepping stones that eventually collided with a labyrinthian garden, a second intersection. The garden added another type of intrigue as only the client knew the way out. The garden was inspired by the novel Locus Solice by Raymond Roussel, the story of a professor touring his excentric garden full of magic and wonder. The shape of the labyrinth was generated by a line drawing of Picasso's, marking nodes of intersection (seen below). This drawing seemed appropriate, both for the inclusion of a work by another artist and for the design itself. The grid was picked up again at the water’s edge to hint of the house to those passing by on the canal.

The inner spaces of the house were kept open and were divided only by a series of walls and columns that would always be located to block an orienting view. The client never wanted the visitor to fully understand the layout of the spaces. The private spaces were placed upstairs, his bedroom, darkroom and office from which he had a view of the garden and the canal.

Part of the project required the design a detail, a "locking device for the elements". This detail was undertaken parallel to the house design. The lock keeping device I built, was a pinhole camera, a device to lock in light and image. The obvious relation of the camera to my client as a photographer was only part of the reason for building this object. My client was a peculiar man and one who always wanted control of a situation. The pinhole camera also forces the user to be in control of the image in a manner distant from that of an ordinary camera.