The summer cabin on a dreamlike island we would all love to experience, designed by Laura Killam

In the southwest of British Columbia, where the Salish Sea unfolds its fractured geography between the mainland and Vancouver Island, a constellation of small islands hosts seasonal cabins where families return year after year to embrace a different pace of life. On one of these off-grid islands, perched on a windswept bluff, the studio Laura Killam Architecture has built Ranch Outpost: a contemporary retreat positioned precisely at the threshold where the forest meets the high meadow, surrounded by coastal pines and Nootka roses that bloom with the first warmth of summer.

The site faces southeast, opening onto a generous horizon: sweeping sea views, long hours of summer light, and the shifting spectacle of coastal storms arriving from the open water. Before imagining a building, the owners spent an entire summer camping there — learning the climate, the silences, the light. From that experience emerged the commission: to create a contemporary cabin where life could unfold simply, informally, and above all, outdoors.

Two modest structures, an open way of life

Laura Killam’s response is a composition of two modest structures arranged in an L-shape, embracing a sheltered courtyard: The Cabin, containing the living spaces and bedrooms — each with its own direct access from outside — and The Barn, a flexible volume housing a multi-use gathering area and a breezeway beneath a broad gabled roof.

Between the two, a particular way of living takes shape: a natural movement between indoors and out, amplified by wide porches, walkways, terraces, and deep roof overhangs that extend the life of the house well beyond its walls.

Adapting to the climate, celebrating the summer

Both volumes sit low, almost at ground level, softening the transition between meadow, deck and interior. Strategic shading elements — sloped roofs, pronounced eaves, open breezeways — allow the building to respond passively to heat and changing light. A generous outdoor shower and bathing area reinforces this direct relationship with nature, inviting a routine that blends with the sound of wind and the salt-laden air drifting in from the sea.

The primary aim was to create a place where summer can be lived fully — from long sunrise to warm evening.

Materials born from the landscape

To endure an exposed environment, materials were chosen with the serenity that true weathering requires. Both walls and roofs are clad in untreated, rough-sawn cedar boards that will naturally silver in the coastal air. Indoors, the same cedar appears in a soft grey finish, echoing the coastal landscape and offering a calm counterpoint to the bright light of the warmest months.

The furnishings, inspired by utilitarian farmstead forms, are robust, durable, understated—pieces designed to support a simple life, free from aesthetic tension or artifice.

The ideal refuge for a slower pace

Ranch Outpost is both a place for lively gatherings and a setting for quiet connection with the land around it. Its architecture proposes a different rhythm, one capable of slowing the days and allowing each gesture — sitting in the shade, walking barefoot, watching the movement of the sea — to regain its meaning.

In essence, the project embodies what its owners envisioned: an architecture that deepens the relationship with the landscape, one that accompanies life without prescribing it, one that allows summer to be experienced intensely, right up to the very edge of each day. A retreat that, like the cedar that wraps it, will evolve over time, finding in the patina of its own materiality the memory of every season.

Project: Ranch Outpost.
Location: Columbia Británica.
Completion: 2025.
Architecture: Laura Killam Arquitectura.
Lead Architect: Laura Killam.
Interior Design: Sophie Burke Design.
Photography: Andrew Latreille.
Source: Laura Killam Arquitectura.

Laura Killman Architecture

Laura Killam Architecture is an interdisciplinary design studio dedicated to enriching everyday life through the spaces it conceives. Specializing in bespoke homes set in the remote, untamed landscapes of the British Columbia coast, the studio pursues design solutions in which function and beauty intertwine, giving shape to an architecture that is serene, discreet and deeply rooted in place. Its work ranges from reading and defining a site in the heart of nature to planning access and infrastructure, always projecting with an eye attentive to both the present and the generations to come, and addressing architecture and interior design as an integrated whole.

LKA approaches each project as a conversation with the land. Its spaces seek to inhabit beauty —the beauty unfolding both within and beyond— and to respond meaningfully to those who will live in them. Each design is conceived to connect people with the natural environment through movement, revealing shifts in perspective, light and shadow, and offering a subtle balance between shelter and openness.

The studio is inspired by the spirit of Sea Ranch in California, the modernist tradition of the West Coast, and a profound commitment to preserving the landscape. Guided by this sensibility, it aspires to create buildings that quietly withdraw, allowing the power of the surroundings to speak first. Its ultimate aim is to shape spaces where one can breathe.

Originally from British Columbia —dividing her early life between Vancouver and a remote island off its coast— Laura Killam brings a multidisciplinary perspective forged as an architect, exhibition designer and film set designer. Her career has been shaped by the creation of spatial environments that are both innovative and meaningful.

Before founding Laura Killam Architecture in 2017, she worked as an architect at Public Architecture & Communication, a renowned Vancouver-based design firm. She previously served as Head of Exhibition Design and Production at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, and collaborated with Gehry Partners in Los Angeles on architecture and exhibition design projects.

Laura holds a Master of Architecture from Yale University —where she was nominated for the Feldman Prize— and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal. She is a licensed architect in British Columbia and the State of Washington, and is a LEED AP.

Committed to education as well, she is an adjunct professor at the UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. She has previously taught in the Architectural Science department at BCIT and in the Design Formation program at Langara College.

Project by Laura Killam