For nearly a decade, Josh Dunford spent weekends camping on his undeveloped 5-acre plot on Valdes Island, one of British Columbia’s Gulf Islands. Then in 2014, when the cofounder of Vancouver design studio Burnkit married Anne Casselman, a science journalist, the couple traded in the tent for something much more permanent--this 390-square-foot vacation home.
The design includes a sleeping loft and rainwater harvesting, and widens the northeastern views over the Strait of Georgia to the mainland in the distance. “It sits quietly in the trees, as if it were a shadow,” says Dunford, who clad the single-room home in locally harvested red cedar that was stained black to blend into the edge of the thick second-growth forest.
Now parents to 2-year-old Martha, Dunford and Casselman ferry over from their home in Vancouver throughout the year when they need a dose of nature. “Being on the island,” says Dunford, “never fails to put life into perspective.”