This Vacation Home in Rural Ontario Sets a New Standard for Prefab Architecture
Mulmur Hills Farm by Turkel Design is a spectacular response to a couple’s desire to bring a connection with nature—and several generations—into everyday living.
Mulmur Hills Farm by Turkel Design is a spectacular response to a couple’s desire to bring a connection with nature—and several generations—into everyday living.
Set within the rolling woodlands in rural Ontario sits a growing family’s vacation home beautifully crafted from timber, stone, and glass. Designed for multigenerational living, Mulmur Hills Farm by Turkel Design is a bold vision for what prefab architecture can be at its best: a bespoke response to the clients’ way of living in which the predictability of the process helps ensure the quality, timing, and cost of the result. It’s also a celebration of past and present, combining understated modern design and impressive timberwork to honor the vernacular of the surrounding 19th-century farm buildings.
"We often hear that our homes don’t look like prefab," says architect Meelena Oleksiuk Turkel. "But there’s no reason high quality, good design and prefabrication can’t work together." Mulmur Hills Farm, for example, makes use of thermally modified ash cladding that contributes to both durability and beauty.
Photo by Maxime Brouillet
"For those who still associate prefab with a lack of customization, or with low-quality materials, our homes upend their expectations," says Meelena Oleksiuk Turkel, partner at Turkel Design. "All of our homes—even those that originate from one of our design starting points in our Design Library—are highly customized for the homeowner’s site and lifestyle."
Turkel Design prioritized the use of sustainable materials to create the bespoke prefab home. A dramatic cross-laminated timber (CLT) cantilever, for example, juts beyond the edge of the garage door. The panelized components—including the structure and shell of the garage and home—are crafted from domestic engineered wood products that result in a straighter, tighter building.
Photo by Maxime Brouillet
The couple who own Mulmur Hills Farm are successful entrepreneurs from Toronto who wanted to build a new vacation home on the 100-acre site they had owned for more than 30 years. They were driven to build the new home as a place to create lasting memories with their children and grandchildren, and the spaces are designed to encourage that type of multigenerational living.
The home enjoys a connection with the surrounding landscape with views from every room that invite the 100-acre site into the interior. "The framed views from each room are a source of pride for us," says architect Meelena Oleksiuk Turkel. "They illustrate the way in which we design for a specific site, bringing the outdoors into the home and making the most of what the homeowners love about their land."
Photo by Maxime Brouillet
See the full story on Dwell.com: This Vacation Home in Rural Ontario Sets a New Standard for Prefab Architecture
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