An elevated home with lakeside view

Thomas Evans and Yousef Farasat, both architects, met as first-year students at McGill University in Montreal. Their friendship blossomed during a class trip to Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains, where they visited a site for a student design project – a new cottage. “We were both older than our classmates,” Mr. Evans says. “We had both already completed other degrees before starting architecture school.”

Nearly two decades later, their friendship remains strong. Mr. Farasat was a groomsman at Mr. Evans’s wedding, and together they co-run Montreal’s LOCUS Architecture + Design. In 2020, their friendship came full circle when Mr. Farasat asked Mr. Evans to help design a new cottage – a real one this time – situated in the Laurentians.