Editorial Photographer: Rethinking the Art of Living Green for Ottawa Magazine

One of my favourite Editorial projects last year was a three-shoot series on “Rethinking the Art of Living Green” for Ottawa Magazine. It explored three different home-based (it was for the Interiors issues) lifestyles that are being explored in Ottawa. With a general theme on communal living, we visited an organic farm, a building in the city, and a farm-based development.

Juniper Farm

Arriving at oh-dark-hundred, I came to shoot Juniper Farm’s rammed-earth home for sunrise. The custom-built homestead is designed for three generations to live communally, with a common dining/kitchen area, and separate quarters for the grandparents.

Juniper is very much a working farm. And by the time I wrapped my shooting of the interiors, the farm-hands were laboriously pulling beats and other organic goodness out of the ground, washing them, and sorting for their fresh distribution to local restaurants.

MacKay Mews

Brainchild of leading green-architect Linda Chapman, Mackay Mews – located in New Edinburgh – is a single condo built for a group of baby-boomer friends. The boxy construction disguises the asymmetrical interiors; each of the four units is unique.

Hendrick Farm

Hendrick Farm is a small development not far outside of Ottawa. Unconventional in it’s approach, they’re not simply clearing the land trying to fit the largest number of boxes in the smallest possible space. There’s a community-plan and a higher level of architectural detail to the homes. You get the feeling that the people building this know that it’s special, and they only have one shot to get it right. While the land was re-zoned to be residential, they’re keeping a lot of land for a communal garden.

This feature took up several pages of the magazine, which is a wonderful spread on any occasion. I was also fortunate to have a few other images in this issue including a portrait I took of Houry Avedissian of Ha² Architecture Design inside of her “Stairway 2 Haven” project.