BEST SKI RETREAT

Flag House, Canada, by Studio MK27

- ELLIE STATHAKI

Designing Flag House was a welcome challenge for Studio MK27. The São Paulo-based practice is renowned for its well-honed, contemporary take on Brazilian modernism and the tropical villa typology – most of its work to date has been in hot climes. To design a home in the frosty natural expanses of Whistler, the ski resort two hours north of Vancouver, was certainly a departure from its norm. ‘We arrived on site and it was all white with the last snow of the season,’ founder Marcio Kogan recalls of the team’s first site visit in 2012. ‘We started climbing the plot’s steep angle, through the snow, and we were warned by our hosts to follow in their footsteps. All of a sudden, my colleagues realised I had completely disappeared. I had fallen in a hole, which was covered up in the thick snow! I had no idea this could happen.’ Luckily, nobody was hurt and the story is recounted fondly and lightheartedly, but it goes to show, Kogan explains, just how inexperienced they were with the climate and its circumstances.