Canada

Canadian studio Reflect Architecture has renovated a home in Toronto for a new generation of the same family, while incorporating an extensive art collection.

North Drive House was the childhood home of one of the owners. After stints living abroad and in Downtown Toronto, the couple were lured back to the two-acre property for the space to raise their young family.
The home’s hallways and living spaces were renovated to feel like a gallery for the couple’s art collectionHowever, the residence’s traditional interiors were not to their taste, so Reflect Architecture principal Trevor Wallace was called in to undertake an extensive renovation.
His approach was to create a deliberate “tension” between the need to display an extensive contemporary art collection – which includes pieces by Robert Mapplethorpe and Erik Madigan Heck – and fulfilling the needs of a family home.
A sculptural staircase features layered bannisters, stepped profiles and curved forms”The idea of living in a gallery was always important to the owners, but the critical distinction is that they didn’t want to live in a museum,” said Wallace.

“This is a family home above all. The owners have always imagined that their kids would one day look back on living here and think it was pretty cool that they were playing soccer or running around inside what felt like an art gallery.”
The living room includes contemporary furniture and a ribbon-like fireplace by Brooklyn designer Leyden LewisThe team retained the existing layout and circulation while updating the spaces with fresh materials, colours and forms.
Most in line with the gallery-like aesthetic, the living spaces, hallways and corridors feature stark white walls and minimalist detailing such as flush doors and entryways.
A different approach is taken in the dining room, where the walls are painted dark tealAt the centre of the home is a staircase designed as if a piece of sculpture itself, comprising layered bannisters, stepped profiles and curvaceous forms.
A similarly playful tactic was applied in the living room, which features a rippling, ribbon-like fireplace designed by Brooklyn-based designer Leyden Lewis.
Doors and entryways throughout the home are designed to be flush with the walls”We had a lot of fun exploring and playing with the staircase’s shapes and orientations,” Wallace said. “We wanted it to feel organic and fluid, and that required being playful. That was true for the entire house from start to finish, it was important that we didn’t take the whole thing too seriously.”
The spareness of these spaces is swapped in the cooking and eating areas, which feature darker, richer colours like the teal dining room.

Blue slide is centrepiece of Walker house renovation by Reflect Architecture

A knotted light fixture by Lindsey Adelman hangs over the large stone dining table, accompanied by chairs with ochre velvet upholstery.
In the kitchen, tone-on-tone travertine cabinetry and surfaces include a new 15-foot-long (4.5-metre) kitchen island.
Tone-on-tone travertine cabinetry and surfaces were added in the kitchenAn existing gabled skylight overhead was maintained, but its beams were updated with a copper hue to “complement the travertine”.
The room is oriented towards a glass wall facing a Japanese maple tree in the garden, under which sits a large dining table by local furniture designer Mary Ratcliffe.
A 15-foot-long (4.5-metre) island was also added beneath an existing skylightWallace founded Reflect Architecture in 2016, and the studio’s previous work includes a Toronto home renovation with a blue slide as its centrepiece.
Other recently completed residential overhauls in the city include a residence connected by asymmetric brass-lined portals and a house where built-in storage volumes were added.
The photography is by Doublespace Photography.

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Brass ribbons line the asymmetric portals that connect the kitchen and dining room of this Toronto residence, renovated by local architecture and art studio Svima.

The Portal House was designed for a couple who had wanted to refresh their home for 10 years, but have very different aesthetic tastes.
Two portals connect the renovated kitchen and dining areas of this Toronto homeToronto-based studio Svima found a compromise by combining his desire for “tenebrous minimalism” and her love of “bright French country kitchens” into the design.
The resulting “denlike cosiness” pairs dark oak across the lower half of the ground-floor spaces and clean white surfaces on the upper half.
The curved, asymmetric portal over the deep counter acts as a pass-throughThe snaked kitchen layout is tight, so Svima curved the corners of cabinetry and counter surfaces to steal extra space for circulation.

This theme continues to the living room millwork: a bookcase is filleted at the corner and meets the wall at an angle, while a built-in sofa beneath the window also softly angles inward.
The other portal, mirrored in shape, forms a doorway between the two spaces”The design hinges on ‘ribbons’ flowing through the space, guiding the motion through the rooms,” said Svima.
“The ribbons curve in areas where sharp corners would not fit, or would stop the flow of movement.”
Brass edges around the portals were artfully installed to perfectly fit the curved drywallIn the kitchen, the curved oak doors were handmade by a cabinetmaker who created a special jig to kerf-bend the oak into a radius.
Tiles that offer a contemporary take on Dutch Delft porcelain form the backsplash, adding small touches of blue to the otherwise neutral space.
To add touches of colour to the dark oak and bright white palette, tiles influenced by Delft porcelain were added to the backsplashTwo portals provide connections between the kitchen and adjacent dining room, both with a mirrored asymmetric shape and edged in brass.
One acts as a doorway, while the other over the deep counter is used as a pass-through for food, drinks and tableware.

Studio Vaaro reconfigures House M using built-in storage volumes

“It was an artful process for the contractor to lay the brass into the wall, as it had to fit into the curved drywall perfectly with no tolerance for error,” the architects said.
The living room, located at the front of the house, was furnished with mid-century pieces such as a chair, a coffee table and a media console.
Dark oak flooring throughout the home’s ground floor matches the other millworkThe closed and open shelving unit organises the family’s books and possessions, and its shape allows more light to enter from a side window.
Opposite, the built-in sofa helps to resolve an awkward space under a bay window and orients the sitter towards the TV to one side.
In the living room, the curved kitchen cabinetry is translated as a storage unit with a filleted side”The custom sofa sweeps into the space to provide seating at precisely the right sideways angle for viewing the media unit, for lounge reading, and for gathering,” Svima said.
The floors throughout the home match the other millwork, grounding the spaces with a rich dark hue.
A built-in sofa under the living room’s bay window similarly features softly curved anglesSvima, founded by architects Anamarija Korolj and Leon Lai, is not the only studio that’s had to get creative with a tight Toronto floor plan.
When Studio Vaaro overhauled a house in the city, the firm created a series of volumes with minimally detailed millwork to form kitchen cabinetry, the staircase and a feature bookcase in the living room.
The photography is by Scott Norsworthy.

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