THIS PICTURE, THE
LOFT-LIKE MASTER
BEDROOM OFFERS
VIEWS OF GARROW BAY
BELOW, THE HOUSE
EMBRACES ITS ROCKY SITEwhose company, like many others, now builds ‘monster
homes’ on West Vancouver’s large lots, often ten times
the size of the relatively modest midcentury footprints
like that of the Beaton residence.
Rooted in bedrock, yet reaching for the sky, bound
by sea and forest, the house is a device for viewing
nature. A kind of rustic West Coast pavilion – a cousin
perhaps to Arthur Erickson’s 1958 Filberg House – it
is part Shinto temple, part paean to Pacific forest.
A residential shrine, its architecture draws in the
centrifugal force of the elements. It would seem no
coincidence that Mudry’s subsequent project was
a rough cedar-clad Baptist church in West Vancouver,
shrouded by a grove of old-growth firs.
For Mudry, revisiting the house he built for
Malcolm Beaton, a bookmaker, and his young family,
is like rekindling an old romance. ‘The first time I saw
it, I fell in love with this site,’ confesses the Frank Lloyd
Wright aficionado. ‘This,’ he exclaims, opening his
arms wide to embrace the ocean, forest and bedrock
of what was once a camping site for his clients, ‘is so
big! And if you don’t grasp that – then you’ve missed
the essence of this place.’
‘Nature is sacrosanct,’ proclaims the now 85-year-old
architect, ‘so I tried to tie the form of living into the »
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