Bill Teron’s striking home is now on the market
The late Bill Teron’s spectacular Kanata home is on the market
It’s easy to imagine design visionary Bill Teron chuckling with delight as a gaggle of impressed design students recently scampered over his beloved home in the Kanata Rockeries, furiously sketching images of a house melding with nature.
One young man was completely oblivious to danger, with his long legs dangling over the edge of the green roof, white sneakers knocking against the glass wall. He was busy drawing the greenery and shimmering ponds that embrace this home of curves.
Inside a glass silo, this one housing Teron’s spectacular home office, Eilidh Sutherland, a 19-yearold from Aberdeen, Scotland, was finishing a detail of flared columns and curved windows looking out over the ponds.
“I love this house,” said the second-year design student.
Sutherland and 57 of her Carleton University pals from the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism were at the ultra modern home that is more a piece of art than architecture.
They were invited by Jean Teron, widow of the towering personality and visionary, who jump-started the garden city of Kanata in the ’60s.
Teron, who preserved waterfronts in Toronto and Vancouver, crafted urban policies as president of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. in the ’70s, took innovative building concepts to Europe and was a longtime and loyal supporter of the arts in Ottawa, died last March. He was 85.
“Bill would have loved this,” says Jean Teron. “He loved students and their curiosity, how they pushed boundaries.”
The students were shepherded by Janine DeBanne, an associate professor in the school and a fan of modern architecture, who was also filling pages with fast pencilled drawings before heading off for a walking tour of Teron’s first masterpiece community, Beaverbrook.
Now, a page in Teron’s own design book has turned.
His personally designed, 5,600-square-foot home of art is for sale.
Asking price is $2.29 million. “This is not a home for one person,” says Jean.
“It needs people. It is wonderful for parties and dinners.”
“It’s not just a great design. It is a piece of art,” says Kim Teron, who worked on the house with her father.
“He was the macro designer and I was the micro designer.” Basically, she made his designs work and she was the energy who restored the house to pristine shape after her father died in the QueenswayCarleton Hospital in March.
A copper roof over the home office has been replaced, snowy white carpeting cushions footsteps, and oversized white furniture customized for the rooms glows. Be careful with red wine.
There is art everywhere, all of it Canadian. This is not just a home. It’s art.
The home, built in 2004, was decades in the design process.
When Teron designed Kanata’s Beaverbrook, he envisioned a complete garden community where homes sat comfortably in nature and nearby high-tech business parks provided jobs. Schools and shops were designed and pathways connected the neighbourhoods.
As it happened, this determined Prairie boy from Gardenton, Man., sold his Kanata lands in the late ’60s and Robert Campeau took over. Teron held on to 15 precious acres of land bordering beaver ponds on the northern edge of Beaverbrook.
“I remember Dad would walk the land on weekends, planning his ideal community,” says Kim. “He knew every rock and I would put his beer bottles by the pond.”
This is a curvaceous home, 95 per cent of the walls sweep, including huge swaths of majestic glass.
A discreet front door opens to a huge reception room that has seen many parties. Curved glass walls draw open, so summer and fall shapes and colours reflect off the shining black granite floor, creating an ever-changing piece of art.
There is little separation between inside and outside living at the Rockeries. The walls seem to disappear. Then there are the private rooms, the family spaces in this home that has both a Japanese lightness and a modern Moorish interpretation.
The master bedroom is a delight. The bed looks part couch, yet faces a curved wall of glass that looks out over ponds. The Terons would spend hours reading in two large rattan loungers. “The plan was as we got older this would be our apartment and we would also have a caregiver,” says Jean.
Jean’s favourite room is the curvaceous kitchen with shoji screens hiding glassware and dishes. Again glass walls offer huge views of changing seasons and massive planting on rocks that seem to embrace and protect this home.
Despite the huge expanse of glass, this is a green home, smart on technologies, strict on energy consumption and offering the luxury of radiant floor heating.
“This home is going to take a special buyer,” says Kim.