The Globe and Mail

'Our blueberries took quite a beating in the hurricane, but we didn't lose any shingles," says Arne Sisson as she walks across the roof of her Nova Scotia home, picking blueberries with husband/architect Richard Kroeker. "They're quite tasty, want one?" A bizarre scenario almost anywhere, it's just slightly out of the ordinary in Living Spaces, an exhibition of contemporary Canadian residential architecture now showing at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre that examines the interaction between people, their houses and nature. For Mr. Kroeker, who tucked his "House in Long Cove" around a large boulder out of respect, it's a given to elevate the portion of earth his house displaced onto the roof. "You're replacing all that natural growth with all that stuff -- concrete, metal, highly processed material -- and it's good to be able to give that back," he says in a looping video of interviews between homeowners and lead curator John Ota. Although Mr. Kroeker doesn't say so, it makes for good pies, too.