SIMPLICITY
‘BUT THERE’S A LOT YOU DON’T SEE — A LOT OF THOUGHT’
AtelierKa ste lic Buffey’s design for a quietly elegant home in the Summerhill neighbourhood has a simplicity that, as is often the case, necessitated some complex forethought. Part of the challenges are common to many new builds on established city streets — such as letting in light when you’re cheek by jowl with the neighbours, and making a home on a small city lot feel open and spacious.
The original house was fairly typical for the street, which consists mostly of circa-1900s family homes. Many of the homes along here aren’t tiny, but they’re placed barely a walkway’s width apart, with short front and back gardens. The mandate was to renovate the existing home extensively to make it suitable for a busy professional couple with an active toddler, creating a balance between openness and light, and privacy. They also needed to pack as much storage and efficiency into the design as possible, since there was no option to alter the original footprint.
Early on, AKB principals Robert Kastelic and Kelly Buffey and their team noted certain real assets as well — foremost among them its proximity to a tennis court and a parkette behind the house, overlooking trees and sunshine rather than the backs of other houses. Orienting the view and light toward the back as much as possible helped to flood the interior with light on all above-grade levels.
By the entrance, it was important to harmonize the building with the street and the home’s Edwardian neighbours, while maintaining a program of simple unfussy materials and planes. The front elevation is clean and a bit cloistered, with its central column of black- stained cedar boards over a background of red brick. A paved courtyard and concrete hardscaping leads to a simple acidetched-glass front door, which opens on a double-height vestibule; additional sunlight pours in from a second window placed high up on the wall. Two other tall narrow windows, one on each level, balance the composition. At the top level, the third floor is set back a few feet, both a nod to bylaw requirements, but also helping to soften the lines of the facade and keep it from looking too imposing.
Inside, three steps up lead to a glass-rail-lined landing that leads on to the stairs or turns toward the main part of the first floor. The interior is open, but not empty; there’s a clear sense of room divisions, and glorious light — set off by purewhite walls, rift- sawn oak, and stainless steel.
“Because we were working with a relatively narrow footprint, we tried to create variety though sectional divisions,” explains Buffey of the variations in grade at the vestibule and in the back, where the kitchen meets t he f amily r oom. What walls there are give a sense of more lying beyond, which instinctively makes a space feel bigger.
Past a sparely furnished front sitting area, the central dining section is illuminated by a shaft that ends in a skylight three storeys up. With this cascade of light pouring down through t he house, l i ttle supplemental lighting is needed; at night, recessed LED lighting casts a soft glow over diners.
There’s not an ounce of clutter anywhere; not a single item is on view that the owners don’t want you to see. It’s as much a practical as an esthetic choice, given the presence of an active little boy in this home, but the trick is in the planning: storage, some of it highly tailored, is built into every room. Floor- to- ceiling folding panels, concealing shelves and closets, take up the longest interior wall; the inner set, however, opens to reveal the entrance to a small powder room and the stairs to the lower level. On the other side, a floating credenza with a hot- rolled steel top and rift- sawn oak front panels adds warmth to the dining area. And some open shelves between living and dining areas feature an angled divider, a tiny bit of design flair that somehow makes the two spaces feel more separate.
The kitchen is another study in generous ( and ingenious) storage, hidden behind a spare face. With its central quartz- topped island that runs a full 20 feet in length, the kitchen’s smooth white swaths of drawers and stainless rear counter recall a galley aboard a yacht. Just how much this kitchen conceals is evident as soon as you open a drawer, where neat and precise drawer organizers keep everything in place and close at hand. “We do an inventory of the clients’ items before we design their kitchen,” Buffey explains. She admits with a smile that adherence to this principle means that “Kitchens are very time- consuming to design, but it’s so worth it in the end.”
Three steps back down, low built- ins line the wall of a cozy family room, where floor- to- ceiling glass doors look out on a private and sunny enclosed garden. In summer t he doors open fully, blurring the barrier between indoors and out, and i ts proximity to the kitchen means that junior can happily watch TV or play under the watchful eye of mum and dad while dinner is being prepared.
At the second- floor landing, the placement of the upper window high in the wall above the vestibule suddenly makes perfect sense: from this vantage point, it offers an eye- level view of the street life outside. The upper floors both proceed logically, a function both of budget and of intelligent space planning. For example, the upper sections of the central skylight shaft are clad in acid-etched glass; on both floors, it ascends through bathrooms, offering light and privacy throughout the respective floors. On each of the upper levels, a pair of small walkouts l eading off the son’s and parent’s bedrooms is lined by a free- standing brick wall that adds privacy ( the neighbours’ windows are within touching distance), and also a certain coziness. Thus guided, the eye is directed inevitably to the sunshine of the tennis courts directly behind.
“This is a ‘ smart’ project, in a number of senses,” says Buffey. “We were dealing with a relatively small footprint, a modest budget, and an uncluttered contemporary design program, that re- quired a lot of design functionality in a relatively small space. And of course, bringing in lots of light despite having no side windows. It may look simple in design, but there’s a lot you don’t see — a lot of thought and mechanics hidden behind the simplicity.”