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From Globe Real Estate Section:
THE PERFECT HOUSE: ARCHITECTURE
Design delight in a sea of infill monstrosities
JOHN BENTLEY MAYS
Of the building of monster homes, there will be no end -- not as long, anyway, as the bullish real estate market continues to encourage replacement of older housing stock instead of renovation. The effect of this market force on our cities is often unwelcome and unpleasant. In Toronto's older residential neighbourhoods, one decent streetscape after another is being distorted by new oversized houses that defy the scale and urban sense of their context.
It's possible to build new houses in old parts of town better than this, and one local architect who has tried to do so, with noteworthy results, is Tye S. Farrow, senior partner in the Toronto firm Farrow Partnership Architects.
Mr. Farrow's problem came in the form of a constrained ravine lot on Millbank Avenue in the up-market Forest Hill neighbourhood. On the lot stood a homely, 1950s, suburban-style house with a pitched roof and a garage facing the street: a perfect candidate, that is, for rip-down and replacement. But that was only one option. Mr. Farrow and his clients (a professional couple with two small children) soon set to work on another, more merciful solution: demolishing only the garage but retaining the quite salvageable (if originally unsightly) house, which was then swallowed up by a larger envelope of new construction.
The outcome of this sound manoeuvre is a unified, bold, Modernist scheme that sits respectfully on Millbank, honouring the restrained height and scale of its immediate neighbours -- a becolumned mini-mansion on one side, a storybook Tudorbethan on the other -- while delivering a jolt of muscular attitude to its architecturally eclectic, anemic streetscape. The new building's multicar garage door (tucked under the cantilevered second storey) faces the street -- an unfortunate expedient perhaps made necessary by the very tight site. But despite this suburban touch, the house's street-side façade -- a composition of blockish volumes curtained in coffee-coloured wood veneer -- communicates a clear sense of urbane solidity and domestic serenity.
The sheltered, inconspicuous entrance to the house opens on to an unexpectedly attractive, expansive foyer, awash in light falling from high above. From this stone-floored lobby, with its heavy-banistered staircase, the whole house unfolds: upward to the bedroom and study level, and outward, to the first-floor flow between kitchen and dining area and living room.
And at the centre of this spatial movement -- poised in a double-height zone between the low ceilings of the relatively shadowed kitchen and living room, and between the ground and the large skylights in the second-storey ceiling far overhead -- stands a large, simple dining room table. Mr. Farrow's front-and-centre positioning of the dining area speaks of a family that loves to entertain, intimately and informally. And together with the ample foyer, this focus on dining expresses what might be called the architectural storyline of the house, its celebration throughout of the sociable pleasures of life, conversation, togetherness.
This theme carries on up the stairs, into the second level. There, off to one side of the sky-lit atrium and overlooking the dining area, is a sunny room set aside as a study. Though comfortable and suitable for reading or working at a computer, this place at the heart of the house is nearly a crossroads. It is more open than a scholar's den, less secluded than an ordinary hobby room or retreat -- quieter than a family room, that is, yet still another space of family gathering and traffic. (There is a family room, by the way, located in the finished basement and opening toward the garden and the ravine beyond.)
A few peripheral things about the house could have stood more thought and could still stand a certain lightening up, in my view: the too-ponderous railings around the terraces and on the stairs, for example, and the monotonous whiteness of every wall and of all the trim that is not dark.
But these are minor, and easily reversible, defects in a house that, in most respects, is an expert piece of domestic design. Mr. Farrow has achieved his admirable goal of making a new structure that incorporates much of what was old. He has provided an instance of recycling serviceable architecture from the past into new building for the future, and he has done so without leaving a hybrid monstrosity on the street. In the current architectural climate, where designers are often called upon to deposit fantasy villas and turreted palaces on curbsides throughout suburbia, making an honest, robust house in Forest Hill is an accomplishment not to be sneezed at.
jmays@globeandmail.com
AoD
THE PERFECT HOUSE: ARCHITECTURE
Design delight in a sea of infill monstrosities
JOHN BENTLEY MAYS
Of the building of monster homes, there will be no end -- not as long, anyway, as the bullish real estate market continues to encourage replacement of older housing stock instead of renovation. The effect of this market force on our cities is often unwelcome and unpleasant. In Toronto's older residential neighbourhoods, one decent streetscape after another is being distorted by new oversized houses that defy the scale and urban sense of their context.
It's possible to build new houses in old parts of town better than this, and one local architect who has tried to do so, with noteworthy results, is Tye S. Farrow, senior partner in the Toronto firm Farrow Partnership Architects.
Mr. Farrow's problem came in the form of a constrained ravine lot on Millbank Avenue in the up-market Forest Hill neighbourhood. On the lot stood a homely, 1950s, suburban-style house with a pitched roof and a garage facing the street: a perfect candidate, that is, for rip-down and replacement. But that was only one option. Mr. Farrow and his clients (a professional couple with two small children) soon set to work on another, more merciful solution: demolishing only the garage but retaining the quite salvageable (if originally unsightly) house, which was then swallowed up by a larger envelope of new construction.
The outcome of this sound manoeuvre is a unified, bold, Modernist scheme that sits respectfully on Millbank, honouring the restrained height and scale of its immediate neighbours -- a becolumned mini-mansion on one side, a storybook Tudorbethan on the other -- while delivering a jolt of muscular attitude to its architecturally eclectic, anemic streetscape. The new building's multicar garage door (tucked under the cantilevered second storey) faces the street -- an unfortunate expedient perhaps made necessary by the very tight site. But despite this suburban touch, the house's street-side façade -- a composition of blockish volumes curtained in coffee-coloured wood veneer -- communicates a clear sense of urbane solidity and domestic serenity.
The sheltered, inconspicuous entrance to the house opens on to an unexpectedly attractive, expansive foyer, awash in light falling from high above. From this stone-floored lobby, with its heavy-banistered staircase, the whole house unfolds: upward to the bedroom and study level, and outward, to the first-floor flow between kitchen and dining area and living room.
And at the centre of this spatial movement -- poised in a double-height zone between the low ceilings of the relatively shadowed kitchen and living room, and between the ground and the large skylights in the second-storey ceiling far overhead -- stands a large, simple dining room table. Mr. Farrow's front-and-centre positioning of the dining area speaks of a family that loves to entertain, intimately and informally. And together with the ample foyer, this focus on dining expresses what might be called the architectural storyline of the house, its celebration throughout of the sociable pleasures of life, conversation, togetherness.
This theme carries on up the stairs, into the second level. There, off to one side of the sky-lit atrium and overlooking the dining area, is a sunny room set aside as a study. Though comfortable and suitable for reading or working at a computer, this place at the heart of the house is nearly a crossroads. It is more open than a scholar's den, less secluded than an ordinary hobby room or retreat -- quieter than a family room, that is, yet still another space of family gathering and traffic. (There is a family room, by the way, located in the finished basement and opening toward the garden and the ravine beyond.)
A few peripheral things about the house could have stood more thought and could still stand a certain lightening up, in my view: the too-ponderous railings around the terraces and on the stairs, for example, and the monotonous whiteness of every wall and of all the trim that is not dark.
But these are minor, and easily reversible, defects in a house that, in most respects, is an expert piece of domestic design. Mr. Farrow has achieved his admirable goal of making a new structure that incorporates much of what was old. He has provided an instance of recycling serviceable architecture from the past into new building for the future, and he has done so without leaving a hybrid monstrosity on the street. In the current architectural climate, where designers are often called upon to deposit fantasy villas and turreted palaces on curbsides throughout suburbia, making an honest, robust house in Forest Hill is an accomplishment not to be sneezed at.
jmays@globeandmail.com
AoD