The Architecture Review

Life in Stratford, Ontario revolves around a summer Shakespeare festival that was started by Tyrone Guthrie in the early 1950s and has become a driving force of the local economy. In this setting, Rundles, a restaurant housed in a former boathouse overlooking the river, has prospered and grown incrementally over the last thirty years under the watchful eye of the same proprietor. The most recent addition, designed by Shim-Sutcliffe for an adjacent site that was formerly a small parking area, provides both a new entrance to the restaurant and a residence. The boundary between living and working is marked by a 20ft (6m) high sitecast concrete wall that slices obliquely between the orthogonal volumes of the two buildings. The angle of the wall gives the restaurant more street frontage, provides space for a reconfigured entrance and additional indoor and outdoor seating areas.