MODERN HOMES CAN COME IN ALL SHAPES AND SIZES
Those who love modern architecture and design — or who just enjoy a fun day out while the weather’s still good — will be happy to know the Modern Architecture + Design Society’s Vancouver Modern Home Tour is returning for a fifth year.
The self-guided tour takes place Sept. 16 and includes six homes spread across the city from West Vancouver to Pacific Spirit Regional Park, all representing the work of leading local architects and designers.
What’s interesting about this year’s tour, says tour organizer Ken Shallcross, is half the homes included in the Vancouver lineup are laneway homes.
“It is very specific to Vancouver,” says Shallcross, who co-ordinates the tours across Canada and the U.S., with an annual turnout in Austin, Texas — where the Modern Architecture + Design Society is based — of close to 1,500 people.
“I mean, every once in a while, you have a really big house here in America, in one of our cities that would have like a guest house in the back, but nothing like a fully sustainable, separate house. That is something that is completely exclusive to Vancouver.”
The number of laneway homes included on the tour speak to a few trends in Vancouver, says Shallcross. One is economic, with property owners investing in laneway homes to generate revenue or provide housing solutions for family members. There’s also the advanced design being applied to these homes.
“Lanefab has been on the tour for the last three years,” Shallcross says. “They specifically do laneway houses, and are just another wonderful example of how you can build something small and modern. They put the same amount of architectural design into a small house that people put into giant houses.”
Giant houses are definitely represented on the tour, such as the almost 4,000-square-foot home and accompanying laneway house designed by Frits de Vries Architect Ltd., adjacent to Point Grey’s Pacific Spirit Regional Park.
Another sizable home is a North Vancouver property designed by Kevin Vallely named The Edge.
“I love his designs,” Shallcross says. “He builds some really cool, modern stuff.”
Shallcross says he likes to include homes that have been renovated to reflect today’s standards of modern architecture and design, such as the West Vancouver Montiverdi Estates property owned and recently renovated by architect designer Desiree LaCas of LCI Designs. The property was originally designed by Arthur Erickson, and built in 1981.
“In the early 1980s, people were still lingering with that mid-century feel,” he says. “And that’s the way it was built, but she completely updated it.”
It’s a common misconception that modern architecture means cold, stark design, says architect Peter Hildebrand, partner at Iredale Architecture, who designed the Pandit Laneway Residence on Vancouver’s west side that is included on the tour.
“It can be quite warm and elegant,” he says. “It’s all about material choices, and light, and surfaces. It can be as warm as a Tudor house, it’s just about how it’s executed.”
The Pandit residence is only the second laneway home Iredale has designed, Hildebrand says, with his firm mostly working on larger projects.
“The last two houses we did were between 4,000 and 5,000 square feet, so this was the opposite end of that,” he says. “But I think because laneway houses are becoming more and more prevalent, we thought it would be good to show what can be done.
“Building very small is challenging,” Hildebrand continues. “Trying to make a space feel spacious, when you’re dealing with a total square footage of just barely over 600 square feet over two floors. The challenge is how do you make it look bigger than it is, and in that, also, how do you create geometries that conform to the city’s bylaws, which are very strict.”
It’s a bit like putting together “a jigsaw puzzle” he says, in meeting the city bylaws, the clients’ aspirations for their home, and creating something architecturally unique.
Shallcross says the Vancouver Modern Home tour has proved really successful over the past four years, and they’re grateful for the “army” of volunteers from The Chip and Shannon Wilson School of Design at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, who are on site at the homes, along with the homeowners and some of the designers and architects, to assist tour goers.
He strongly recommends people buy their tickets online before the tour, so they will receive any pretour correspondence, which includes a map of where they’re going and tips for making the day run smoothly.
This year, he says, the $50 ticket price includes tour admission and a party on the Thursday before, where there will be food, drinks and a “Q&A with some of the architects.”
For more info and to buy tickets, visit: mads.media/2017-vancouver-mads-modern-home-tour