Paul Kariouk has had a thing for bats since he was a kid. “I was Dracula every year for Halloween,” he says. So when Paul, an Ottawa resident who’s an architect by trade, was designing his own off-grid cabin on Lac Brochet, Que. (located about half an hour outside of Wakefield), he felt compelled to make space for more than just himself and his partner, Tony Gioventu, who is the CEO of a non-profit. The cabin would be perfectly positioned to provide shelter for up to a thousand of the tiny creatures, thanks to bat boxes attached to the support system underneath the 20-metre-high structure. Brown bats can eat up to 1,000 mosquitoes in an hour, which can contribute to significantly more comfortable summer evenings. “Anything we can do to help the little guys out,” says Paul.

The design of the cottage is centred on sustainability and conservation, from the solar power system to the very nature of its construction. Paul had always wanted to build his own cabin—he had intention- ally sought out a steep piece of land to match the vision he had in his head of a home attached to a cliff—and when he started designing back in 2007, “Steel was the logical choice for that kind of construction,” he says.

But the economy slowed down, and his cabin project was put on hold. His practice was working on another residential project with a B.C.-based company called Structurlam, and that’s where he discovered cross-laminated timber, or CLT. It’s a building material that’s made from layers of kiln-dried lumber arranged in alternating directions and glued together. The material is both incredibly strong—it is now being used in lieu of energy-intensive concrete in many high-rises—and environmentally friendly. It can even be made from beetle-killed pine, which provides a use for trees killed during the damaging pine-beetle outbreak in western Canada. “It was a fortunate thing in hindsight,” he says. “The economy forced me not to build what I initially wanted to build—and it gave me time to discover something better.”

Because the cabin site is located five kilometres from the closest municipal road—trucks and machinery had only a narrow logging trail with which to access the site during construction—Paul threw himself into calculating how small the CLT panels could be while still providing the necessary structural strength. “It turned into this insane labour of love researching the product,” he says. CLT panels are typically pre-milled in a facility, shipped in flatpacks, and then put together on the property. “The panels have been milled with the precision of dental work, so that one piece meets the next one on-site,” Paul explains.

Inside the cabin, the space is warm and welcoming thanks in large part to a high-efficiency woodstove that provides the heat, and to furniture and art from Paul and Tony’s personal collections. The vintage dining chairs are from Tony’s family, but the table is new: Paul designed it specially for Tony, who almost always has a jigsaw puzzle on the go (he says he can burn through a 1,000-piece puzzle in about four hours). The top layer sits on pins, and it can be lifted off, revealing the in-progress puzzle on the second layer below. “When you’re puzzling with company, the conversations always continue—you don’t want to drop in and isolate,” says Tony. “So it’s got a great community function.”

In the kitchen, the cabinets are made from high-pressure laminate that won’t easily show wear, nor will it fade in the sun. “There are two really great products that came out mid-century,” says Paul. “One is high-pressure laminate— it lasts forever—and the other is linoleum, made out of linseed oil.” The latter serves as sturdy flooring throughout the space: “It’s indestructible under huge dog claws.”

And that bold and blue colour choice was all Tony, inspired by Quebec winters. “If you’re in the middle of a -25°C day, the skies are still a brilliant blue,” he says. “The cobalt blue colour adds real vibrancy to the room.”

And about those bats. Bat populations have dropped by up to 90 per cent in some parts of eastern Canada, but much to Paul’s delight, more are taking up residence below the cottage every year. “Even before we built the bat houses, they would get into the nooks and crannies of the steel mast,” he says. The height of the boxes on the mast gives the animals easy access along their flight path from the lake, as well as protection from any climbing predators. And unlike the technical feats involved in suspending a cabin so high in the air, building a home for a bat is a comparatively simple task. “You’re just building these small, cramped little boxes,” says Paul.

The welcoming cottage has proven to be a perfect getaway for the humans who live here too. “My favourite times are Sunday mornings—when it’s a sunny day, we’re listening to the CBC and playing on a puzzle,” says Tony. “It’s just a great escape from the world.”