This is not a new video (click here if you can't see it embedded above). It's from 2015. But I still very much like the simplicity of the Vipp Shelter. It's only 55 square meters.

One problem is that it cost USD 585,000 at the time it was prefabricated. It goes to show you that prefabrication and small don't necessarily equate to affordability. For this reason, Lloyd Alter called it a "problematic prefab" back in 2015.

Of course, there are ways to make a home like this much more cost effective. I've been looking, on and off, for over a year for a piece of land that would be suitable for a project like this. I'll let you all know if I find something.

Over the years on this blog I have posted the occasional “Project Profile”, where I have shared a noteworthy development project, an interesting piece of architecture, or some other kind of project that I thought would interest all of you. Everything is now a project.

This morning I decided that I should do that more often. I’m not sure if it will be every week, but hopefully it’ll be fairly regularly. I also have a few other alliterative blog series that I have started in the past and should continue.

This week’s Project Profile is the Pavillon du lac in Quèbec (somewhere) by Montréal-based Daoust Lestage. All of the photography used in this post is by Adrien Williams. 

The first thing you may notice is that it is evocative of Philip Johnson’s Glass House and Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House (1951) – but probably more the latter.

Le Pavillon du lac was completed in 2015. It has 2 bedrooms and is about 1,240 square feet. The entire glass pavilion is housed between two thin flat slabs with cantilevering overhangs on two of its elevation. They create a kind of portico that frames views of the water. All of the glass is triple-glazed.