Spa Scandina
Pine Hill Estate, QC
Across two levels, the experience is arranged with a fluid logic. The ground floor, bathed in natural light, welcomes visitors into a shared atmosphere, café, boutique, and central hearth. Spaces unfold slowly, punctuated by carefully framed views of the surrounding landscape.
Below, the garden level houses the treatment areas: Massage Rooms, Hammam, Scandinavian Sauna, Hot & Cold pools, and Exfoliation Rooms. Each space opens onto terraces or paths leading into the forest, extending the ritual of the body through the ritual of walking.
The volumes interact with the site rather than competing with it. The main wing reaches out toward the lake like a suspended bridge, while the garden wing anchors itself firmly into the earth. This tension between grounding and lightness defines the character of the place. Water flows freely, spilling from pools onto stone, evaporating in the light, condensing on cool surfaces. The sound of the waterfall becomes the breath of the building.
Scattered throughout the grounds, the outdoor pavilions extend the experience. One moves slowly among wind, steam, and fire. Terraces open onto the forest; stone fire pits gather visitors together; in the evening, flames answer the shimmer of the lake, and the spa itself becomes the landscape. Here, architecture speaks first and foremost through materiality.
Local stone ties the building to the ground, asserting a stable, mineral foundation. Wood; raw, light, sometimes charred, warms the spaces and tells the story of the forest. The slender, patinated metal roof reflects the ever-changing skies of the Laurentians. Hemp insulation, produced locally, acts as a vegetal memory of the place: a living, breathing material, born from the very soil on which the building stands.
Every decision is guided by coherence and durability. No monumentality, only the precision of the gesture, the rigor of the line, the poetry of detail. Inside, light becomes matter. It filters through wood, fractures across steam, and settles on damp stone. The air is warm, dense, almost tangible. Silence, never empty, breathes and listens.
Spa Scandina is not an architectural object, but an inhabited experience, a sequence of suspended moments where architecture, material, and nature merge. A place to move through slowly, to feel rather than to observe. A discreet refuge, a haven of peace nestled within the forest, where the warmth of the sauna, the chill of the waterfall, and the calm of the water merge into a single, shared breath.
