68
MLBLUE
SPRING2017
words :: Nelson Phillips
photography :: Juliet Tanas
“I don’t think you’ll ever find a house like this in Canada,” says visionary
and serial entrepreneur Jeremy Gourlay. He and his wife Kati Penny have
been crafting a mountain-Scandinavian home on the Blue Mountains–
Euphrasia Townline for the last four years, and living there for two. To say
this place is unique doesn’t begin to do it justice.
The Black Barn blends an authentic aura of rural resourcefulness and
postmodern Zen like no building we’ve ever seen, and it does so by
recycling and upcyclingmaterials in ways that the original manufacturers
and designers would never dream of. It’s a perfectly creative example
of what can be done when inclusion takes precedent over boundaries
and limitations; in a way, the Black Barn symbolizes Canada—it invites
everything inside to create a mosaic of cultures, textures, and ideologies.
Slated to be completed by early autumn, the home boasts four living
rooms, five-plus bedrooms, two woodstove inserts, integrated speakers, a
green roof, art studio, and a one-of-a-kind subterranean wine cellar to be
housed under a glass floor. Unique enough? Add in industrial and banking
remnants from Cambridge, Ontario and New York City, the odd stable door,
a jet fuel cap as a faucet, a barrelled basement tunnel ceiling and a dog-
wash for goodmeasure.
The process began from the ground up, says Jeremy. “You spend enough
time on job sites to learn how things come together. Everything here is
totally custom.”
“We lived and breathed it,” says Kati. “Howmany times did we stand
back, sit and talk about how to do it? All of your design sketches for the
stairs are on the plywood underneath the brick,” she says, smiling at
Jeremy. “He would sketch and recreate until it was right. I’ve always told
people it’s [Jeremy’s] brain being let go.”
THEBLACKBARN
“RURALZEN”,CANADIANMOSAIC,MOUNTAIN-SCANDINAVIAN?
ALLOFTHEABOVE
MOUNTAIN
HOME
