GIVING THE PAST ITS DUE
A modern addition to a Toronto Edwardian is at once seamless and obvious
One of the most challenging assignments an architect can face is adding Modernist design to a very traditional home, without compromising either style, and without creating a jarring transition where old meets new. What’s beautiful about this renovation, by Toronto architect Ian MacDonald, is that the extensive reworking of the back half of the house solved a host of practical problems, but feels every bit as warm and humane as the original section.
The house, a stately mid-Toronto Edwardian, had very attractive bones, from its original oak strip floors and generously proportioned rooms, to the rambling garden the wife of the couple had designed and tended over the 30 years they had lived there. They had raised a family and several Scottish terriers here; but in all that time, they had worked around a design that had perhaps made sense in an earlier time, but now that they were older, was no longer workable. (“We wondered why we always got badtempered whenever we were in the kitchen,” the owner laughs. “It hadn’t really been updated since the ’50s, and it was a nightmare to work in. And we raised three children in it!”)
Still, they were loath to downsize and relinquish a lifetime of memories in the old house they loved; instead, they decided to call in MacDonald, whose work they admired and whom they knew through his teaching at the University of Toronto.
Part of the pleasure of this project, MacDonald says, was that the owners had clear ideas from the beginning of how they wanted the transformation to take place. They already had good instincts about how to marry traditional with modern gracefully, as seen in the main part of the home at the front, which remained relatively untouched. Dignified period elements — high ceilings, dining room ceiling coffers, handsomely finished oak strip floors, and hot water radiator covers (subtly updated with horizontal slats), were paired with gallery-esque white walls, modern furnishings and antiques sourced over a lifetime of travels, all in service to an extensive collection of fine art and sculpture.
They felt strongly about keeping a sense of the warmth of the home’s original design, even as it was brought into the 21st century. “I was very concerned about the ‘slash and burn’ aspect of many Toronto renovations,” explains the owner. “We wanted to retain clues of what had been here before, without being too garish about it.”
MacDonald recalls recognizing the most serious problem the very first time he came to see it. It wasn’t just the Lucy Ricardo kitchen, or the spottily insulated family room and its drafty sliding doors, or the woeful lack of storage in the master suite. The issue was the whole back of the house.
“I opened the hallway door to the kitchen,” he recalls, “and got a glimpse, through the small garden-door window, of a huge, beautiful Japanese maple. There was a series of small rooms and storage, and the back stairs to the basement — and basically no sense at all of connection to that beautiful garden.” He knew immediately that opening up the house to the garden would be the centrepiece of the renovation.
The new section begins beyond a modest pocket door clad in fir, a warm, mellow wood with a fine grain that works well with the oak and other original woodwork in the home.
Walk through this door, and the full glory of the garden rises before you. The entire back section of the house is framed in glass, extending around the edge of the wall and down past the sightline of the kitchen by the basement stairs. “Mies van der Rohe expressed the idea of the mystery of the el-shaped room, that automatically makes a space feel larger. It’s a human instinct, when you don’t see the boundaries of something, to engage the imagination that there is more lying just beyond the view.”
The sense of where house ends and exterior begins is further blurred by exposed rafters that extend past the window to form the roof of the covered patio beyond. Similar slate flooring inside and out, and paired lamps on both sides add to the illusion.
Redesigning the kitchen was, of course, high on the owners’ wish list. While the footprint wasn’t extensively expanded, MacDonald opened it up to the view and made it work better, choosing materials that stand out for their efficiency and subtle beauty: a backsplash made from a piece of striking mustard-toned Spanish marble, warm grey cupboards, and striking, beautifully installed stainless steel counters. The craftsmanship in the kitchen, and the design as a whole, has echoes in the owner’s collection of hand-thrown French Jaspé and post-war British pottery, displayed on bespoke shelves that extend past the kitchen towards the back window. Between the kitchen and the open stairs to the lower level, a built-in sofa flanked by low bookshelves, creates a relaxing spot to stretch out in the sun with a book, or chat with the cook.
Upstairs, the master suite strikes the same exquisite balance among openness, functionality and a sense of continuity in materials and history. Here too, the garden view is framed by a single, full-width window; in the foreground, a green roof over the covered patio below gives a sense of coolness on hot summer days. (“We thought of putting a deck out here,” MacDonald explains, “but it would have required a railing, which would have cut the garden view.”) The lower sill of the window is concealed behind a custom sofa, uphol- stered in a leafy green that harmonizes with the view and obscures the lower windowsill, repeating van der Rohe’s disappearing trick. All around the room, and in a free-standing structure leading to the ensuite, built-ins in the same mellow fir provide muchneeded storage and help to define the space.
“There’s no question that older houses have distinct personalities; they’re very much like people,” says MacDonald. “Often, when you work with an older home, people want you to make the changes seamless, but I think the change should be legible — you should be able to trace what was done. It’s part of the home’s history as well.”
We wondered why we always got bad-tempered whenever we were in the kitchen. It hadn’t really been updated since the ’50s, and it was a nightmare to work in. And we raised three children in it! — homeowner