Symbiont is a partial renovation and two-storey addition to a modest brick semi-detached home located in Toronto, Ontario. Engaged in March 2022, the clients sought to expand their 1,417 square foot home to accommodate a growing family and make better use of an unusually wide lot. The completed work adds 847 square feet over two floors, bringing the above-grade total to 2,264 square feet.

The house takes its name from the biological term, symbiont, which describes an organism that lives in close association with another for mutual benefit. Here, the addition does not imitate the existing house, nor does it dominate it. Instead, it wraps the original brick volume in a deliberate act of symbiosis. A corrugated steel shell bends and kinks around the corner, establishing a form that remains distinct yet interdependent. The steel offers durability and economy while allowing the curved gesture to resolve cleanly against the rectilinear block. Above, the new roofline lifts from the existing hip and introduces a secondary ridge, visually stitching old and new into a singular silhouette.

Inside, the ground floor opens to a new kitchen and dining area, accessed by repurposing a former south-facing door opening. Upstairs, an expanded window draws the original structure into a new office, bedroom, and en suite. The material palette remains consistent at the envelope, yet the exposed brick now reads as an interior wall within the addition, reinforcing the dialogue between the two artifacts, and contrasting with the otherwise soft materiality of the walls, ceilings, and furnishings.

Today, the addition peeks confidently from the side of its otherwise unassuming host, at once deferential and unapologetic.