NAUTICAL KNOWLEDGE OTTAWA NAVAL ARCHITECT’S HOME DESIGN IN SHIP SHAPE
Centretown West house blends artistic imagination with precision
A rare residential gem, tucked away on a small side street in Centretown West, is a testament to one Ottawa man’s determination to build a house that both masterfully blends artistic imagination with mathematical precision, and gives new meaning to a custom home.
Nathaniel Davis’s dream was to create a residence that he would design down to the minutest of details, driven by dual passions that drew him to a career as a naval architect.
Born and raised in the northern Alberta city of Spruce Grove, just outside of Edmonton, Davis spent endless hours as a boy building structures with his LEGO set — and even more time as a teen racing sailboats in competitions, some of which he won, across Canada.
Inspired by both youthful pursuits, the now-35-year-old recreational sailor initially wanted to become a yacht designer and enrolled in Canada’s only ocean and naval architectural engineering program offered at Memorial University in St. John’s.
After graduating with a bachelor of engineering degree in 2007, Davis moved to Ottawa and joined the Department of National Defence as a project naval architect and has led teams responsible for preparing concept designs for the Royal Canadian Navy’s fleet of ships, including frigates and destroyers. Over the past decade, Davis has been involved in preparing concept and preliminary designs for at least 15 ships, which are at various stages of planning and production.
Designing big naval boats requires exactitude to ensure that everything and everyone on board can be accommodated within the hull. So when Davis purchased a 25-foot-wide, 100-foot-deep lot in 2014, he decided to embark on a similar quest for accuracy in designing a three-storey home that would ensure every inch inside was also laid out in its entirety before construction began in September 2015.
“When designing a ship, I work from the hull in and map out the entire vessel, which is what guided me in designing my home,” explains Davis.
To plan his home, he used Rhinoceros, the same 3D modelling software he employs at work to map out the space-geometry inside ships, which are designed to maximize the efficient use of volume and ensure the ship is built correctly.
The process begins with positioning the vessels’ verticals, such as trunking for exhaust and ventilation, and watertight bulkheads, before determining the location of cabins or corridor widths, deck by deck, to make sure there’s room for everything.
“If you move a stair tower, it affects every deck on a ship,” explains Davis. “So before you place a kitchen or a bathroom or a bedroom in a house, you need to start with the verticals.”
Rhino allowed him to sketch out his entire house following that approach, commencing with the giant bright atrium that runs through the middle featuring three steel stair runs and glass bridges, which look like ultracontemporary decks from a ship. Davis was then able to model the rest of the house to plot out rooms and hallways, down to such details as to where the kitchen table would be placed, within a centimetre, between two windows.
He says that Rhino, which is also used as a modelling tool for aircraft and automobile manufacturing, allowed him to know exactly were light would fall through those windows, rather than an approximation.
The computerized rendering task took about a couple of months to complete.
But Davis is quick to point out that his rectangular-shaped, glassfronted, gallery-like modern home is not custom-designed in the traditional sense of choosing cabinets, countertops and wall colours.
“A custom home is when you do precisely what I did with my own stair design, my own bridges and skylight, my own window sizes and where I precisely wanted to place them. Everything in this house has its place and is in its place for a reason,” says Davis, who moved into the house in April 2016.
“I would call what I did a bespoke design tailored to meet everything I wanted in my home,” he explains.
Although not designed to look like a ship, the house features an unintentional nod to Davis’s day job.
Two levels of decks overlooking the backyard look like the stern of a ship.