In designing 40 cabins for a golf club on Bigwin Island, a forested resort on Lake of Bays, north of Toronto, architect Brian MacKay-Lyons became acutely aware of the sight lines. Deer had chewed out the undergrowth, so, on the initial site visit, he could see the lake even from the center of the island. Accordingly, he lined up the eaves of his cedar shingle roofs with the top of the grazing line under the boughs of maple, pine, and ash trees.

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MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects, based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, won the Canada-wide architectural design competition for Bigwin Island in 2014. The historic site, named after Ojibway chief John Bigwin, had been created in 1922 and, over the years, lured Canadian tycoons, Hollywood stars, and even the Dutch royal family to this preserve in the district of Muskoka. In building new guesthouses, which range from 1,230 to 1,350 square feet, the island’s owner, Jack Wadsworth, hopes that members of the golf club will want to use the cottages during the summer and let them be rented out off-season.

Recently, the firm completed the first three prototypes, each with a different template: one has a floor plan that is linear, for those properties that are close to the lake; the second has a courtyard-scheme for houses in the woods; and the third is a pinwheel type for those in the meadows. Cabins are sited to create village greens around meadows or offer vistas of the lake or golf course. Each emphasizes its immediate context. “I see the cabins as landscape-viewing instruments,” MacKay-Lyons says.

The architecture itself looks to the vernacular— a longstanding interest of the office since its founding in 1985. Here, MacKay-Lyons has created handsome, large, overhanging pyramidal roofs and screen porches that pay tribute to traditional Muskoka lake cottages and boathouses. Using local materials and building techniques, he constructed the cabins with glazed and shiplapped-wood walls, steel columns, and cedar-shingle roofs over conventional trusses. Other features of the two bedroom dwellings are hearths and asymmetrical skylights, along with geothermal wells. Although the architects furnished the prototypes with Mission-style furniture, each owner can choose his or her own décor.

In this picturesque cluster, MacKay-Lyons emphasizes not only the dialogue created between architecture and nature, but the sense of the community generated by the way the cottages relate to each other. The ensemble is as important as the sight lines.