This Modern Cedar Cabin Near Victoria Is an Anti-Office in the Woods

For many office workers, the modern workday begins not with the sound of chirping birds, but with the soft chime of Teams messages and email notifications before the first coffee is even finished. For Mark Burkart, principal and founder of Little Giant Studio, that hum of hyperconnectivity was part of the thinking behind the firm’s new Victoria studio.

“The challenge of design used to be finding inspiration throughout the world,” says Burkart. “Today’s challenge, I think, is filtering out inspiration.”

The studio is now one of three Little Giant Studio offices, alongside locations in Calgary and Tofino. Tucked into a sloped, forested site about 35 minutes outside downtown Victoria, the 967-square-foot elevated cabin offers an escape from that endless flow of input. Surrounded by moss, ferns, cedar and Douglas fir, the treehouse-like studio overlooks Saanich Inlet and gives the team a different kind of workplace: one that steps away from the city and into nature, inviting slower, more grounded creative thinking.

At first, Little Giant didn’t set out to design its own office. “I always think it was a very happy accident,” recalls Burkart.

The Studio is actually an outbuilding on a property owned by a couple that splits their time between London and Vancouver Island. The homeowners, who live in the main house, had envisioned a flexible secondary building that could act as a studio for an artist or musician, while also doubling as a guest space or secondary suite.

“They love creative projects,” says Burkart, noting their connection to London’s arts scene. “They wanted to create this modern studio space here and imagined that it might house an artist of some kind.”

At the same time, the Little Giant team was looking for space for a new studio in Victoria. As the project unfolded and the clients and designers grew closer, the homeowners approached Burkart’s team with a proposition: that Little Giant take over the space they had already been shaping.

“We became very good friends,” says Burkart. “It was always intended to house a creative in here, but it wasn’t always our intent to be that tenant. But we love it here.”

Though the two-storey cabin currently functions as Little Giant’s Victoria office, the flexibility of the original brief remains built into the plan. The two bedrooms have been adapted as a meeting room and secondary office, while the upper-level living space serves as the team’s main workspace.

The architecture draws from the surrounding landscape and familiar Pacific Northwest typologies, paring those back into a cleaner, more contemporary form. Wrapped in dark cedar with a simple gabled roof, the cabin is an abstracted take on historic timber mills and coastal canneries. The material palette follows a similar logic: hemlock ceilings nod to the trees on site, a stone wall at the entry incorporates rock from the property, and vein-cut titanium travertine countertops were chosen for their resemblance to the layered sand of nearby beaches. “We like to use materials that are local so that the building, structure and spaces reflect the spirit of place,” explains Burkart.

The cabin is also meant to touch the ground lightly, minimizing impact on the steep site while maintaining outward views and privacy between buildings. Raised on a concrete base, the studio cantilevers over the slope, with an elevated path through a sea of ferns and salal leading to the entry. “You have this feeling that you’re floating up in the air a little bit and in the trees,” says Burkart.

The sense of being in the trees carries through to the exterior, where vertical dark-stained cedar slats wrap the building envelope and roof. The screens help the cabin blend into the forest while filtering light and views, a detail Burkart notes was one of the most challenging to resolve and one of the most important to get right.

Inside, light natural finishes, muted monochromatic tones and generous glazing help create a serene workspace and offset darker, rainier months on the West Coast.

Although the studio is outside the city, Burkart says the location hasn’t been a problem for clients or staff. If anything, the setting has become part of the experience, giving visitors a clear sense of the firm’s values in built form.

“People love working here,” he says. “I think of it as an anti-office space. Office spaces are [typically] inward-looking, and there’s a hectic downtown energy. This is very much the opposite.”

Outside the main studio space, a covered deck becomes another place to take a business call, step away for coffee or simply look out at the water to think. In the summertime, the windows open up to the sound of birds, rustling trees and the ocean beyond.

“It’s an idea that we could get inspiration from this calm atmospheric experience,” says Burkart. “Being quiet and calm and celebrating the stillness in a world that’s super loud right now—that, I think, is what we wanted to do.”

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Sources

Architecture and Interior design: Little Giant , @littlegiant_studio

Contractor: Maximillian Huxley

Photography: Chris Amat