Nyhoff Architecture recently designed a riverside home in Calgary that is flood proof and a house in Lethbridge that shelters against the city’s notorious high winds. Both properties are currently under construction and scheduled for completion later this year.

“There’s a stronger design consciousness in Alberta now than there’s ever been,” architect and co-owner Kevin Nyhoff says. “Homeowners are far more aware of the power of design in shaping an environment and we’re finding people are coming to us more and more with their own ideas and a desire to have something quite specific to their location.”

His wife, Mairi, also an architect and co-owner of the firm, agrees.

“There’s a trend towards downsizing and living more simply but there’s also a trend towards very practical, functional design,” she says. “That’s something that both of these projects had to exemplify for very different reasons.”

The Nyhoffs’ flood-proof design was undertaken for Ethel Nakano and Peter Stapleton in the southwestern neighbourhood of Erlton, on the Elbow River. The couple purchased the site, including a 1920s rental unit, in 2013 with the intention of taking advantage of the large riverside lot to build their dream house.

“We’d planned a pretty conventional home; two storeys with a basement and we were hoping to go back a little bit on the property to move the home closer to the river,” Ms. Nakano says.

The couple engaged the services of Nyhoff Architecture, which put together some preliminary designs. Six months later, the site was devastated by the flood and the couple were faced with a new set of restrictions for their project.

“When we talked to the city postflood, we were told we’d have to build on the original footprint and we couldn’t have a basement. I was really worried at that point. I thought we were going to end up with a very constrained, very boring house,” Mr. Stapleton says.

“We were also nervous about future flooding and what we might have to deal with if it happened again,” Ms. Nakano says. “But we still loved the location and we still wanted to build there, even though our vision for the project and our priorities had changed entirely.”

With a new set of parameters, the Nyhoffs tore up the original plans and started working on something far less conventional. The new design sees the house go up three storeys with the living space and bedrooms all on the second and third floors, and only a garage and powder room on the main floor.

“The biggest issue with flooding isn’t the flood itself, it’s the cleanup afterwards. The whole main floor of the property is concrete so that, in the event of a flood, it could be drained and hosed out fairly easily,” Mr. Nyhoff explains.

“The home also has rolling shutters, which come down to protect against floating debris, logs, branches, that sort of thing,” Mrs. Nyhoff adds. “We’re also installing a suspended storage system attached to the main-floor ceiling. It’s kind of like an upside-down basement, which keeps stored items above the potential flood level.”

“On the second floor, the home really opens up; it cantilevers to the east and west,” Mr. Nyhoff says. “The rear of the house is actually sculpted to the floodway, maximizing the footprint, so it’s angular and has this oddly shaped little corner, which we took as an opportunity to build in a little coffee nook with a great view towards downtown.”

Their priority, and the priority of their clients, was that the house shouldn’t look like a structure that had been designed as a flood-proof home or one that was designed around the constraints of its location.

“We didn’t want to put it up on stilts or anything that would exaggerate its flood-fighting attributes,” Mr. Nyhoff says. “We wanted to normalize the design so that it could be a prototype for other houses to follow.”

Ms. Nakano and Mr. Stapletonsay the new design is far better than their original plans for the house.

“We love it. From a design perspective, it’s better than it was going to be and that’s surprised us,” Mr. Stapleton says. “Plus, we have the peace of mind that comes with knowing that in the event of another flood, our home would come out all right.”

Meanwhile, in Lethbridge, a windproof home designed by the Nyhoffs is also under construction for Kevin and Michelle McFadzen.

Known as Alberta’s windy city, Lethbridge is Canada’s second-windiest city with wind speeds of at least 40 kilometres an hour for an average of 115 days a year. It’s second only to Saint John on that metric.

“Lethbridge is very different to Calgary,” Mr. McFadzen says. “It’s warmer and stays warmer later in the evening. It has more of a prairie climate than a mountain one. But yes, it can also be crazy-windy here.”

The McFadzens grew up in Lethbridge before moving to Victoria. They returned 10 years ago and bought a house in the suburbs while they waited for an opportunity to create their family’s dream home.

“We wanted something unique, something that suited our family unit and that was designed for our Lethbridge lifestyle,” Mrs. McFadzen says. “We didn’t really know what that would look like, but we knew taking Lethbridge’s weather in consideration was important.”

Mr. Nyhoff also grew up in Lethbridge, so he understood the importance of building sheltering features into the home.

“Kevin and Michelle both love the outdoors and they have a daughter who also loves being outside, so creating a space which would make the most of the warmer temperatures and mitigate against windier days was a priority,” Mr. Nyhoff explains.

The site on which the McFadzens are building is on London Road; it was a former boarding house and, before that, a hospital. They purchased it with friends in 2015 and subdivided it. It’s a sloped corner site with a south-facing backyard, which further influenced the design.

“The design is like a giant open-ended tube, which sits on a concrete plinth,” Mrs. Nyhoff explains. “The tube is cantilevered north and south, so it shelters their outdoor space. The upper deck will get the same shelter from the tube shape.”

Inside, an open-plan living, kitchen and dining space will be located on the second floor, which will be raised three feet above street level. The bedrooms and a further living space will be tucked under the house at grade, where they’ll benefit from more efficient temperature regulation.

“Outside, there will be a retaining wall along the perimeter of the site, which will further protect the property from high winds,” Mr. Nyhoff adds. “We’re aiming to create a little microclimate in the backyard.”

Both homes are scheduled for completion by the end of the year and, Mr. Nyhoff says, they’re both a testament to the fact that unique, made-to-measure design doesn’t necessarily have a huge price tag.

“Both these homes are fairly modest in their budgets; the Lethbridge home will be under $600,000. We’ve used very conventional building materials for the most part, which has allowed the higher-end materials to stand out where we have used them,” Mr. Nyhoff says.

“It’s not about huge floor plans and expensive materials, it’s about using design to shape an environment and a lifestyle,” Mrs. Nyhoff adds.