At its heart, this inner-city home is about evolving what has become an all too typical recipe for infill housing. Where most infill houses follow the same stacked program and formal strategies (especially in Calgary), this project seeks to create a home within the established city that is specific to place by utilizing site specific environmental constraints and natural forces. As a long term goal, the building seeks to create a sustainable and durable home.
Located in city’s inner east, on the border of an ancient river’s edge - the site mimics its prehistoric position, an ecotone between a once still wooded area and river below. In its contemporary context, the ridge serves as a busy north/south artery with a residential fabric beyond. The house becomes a framework for expressing the conceptual idea, a protective shell which shelters its inhabitants from the bustle of a busy artery while providing a considered porosity allowing select moments of light, life, and activity to filter through.
With its environmental and formal agenda, the house is realized as a bi-way lantern, expressed as a three storey south facing void that invites natural light into the home, a direct contrast to the typical norm of infill houses. The house steps back from the lantern and with a curved flourish, providing a solid brick upper screen which mitigates the adjacent street noise. The lantern is embedded within the site and a large full height light well brings full size glazing and natural light to the basement level, typically a more utilitarian space.
The front mass is left reduced and expressive, the living room and entry parceled together in a singular formal gesture while a large upper window side-steps large established trees. Elements of the house that abut the urban edges closest to the street are adorned in a grey brick, expressed by black steel accents. A playful easterly window pattern provides light and select views over and above the adjacent street, and the house steps back and narrows toward the rear yard allowing the lantern to take precedence and a wrap-around terrace to provide at-grade amenity.
Inside, the reductive materiality and detailing on the exterior is similarly expressed. Blackened ash millwork hide the functional elements of the home, even a small water closet which is hidden in the entry closets and adorned with a full size mural of Tokyo by graphic artist E-boy. Black steel and timber stairs connect all three levels of the home, and hang within the lantern void.
Upstairs, the lantern void culminates in a large open gallery intended for morning yoga or meditation with an appropriate south and easterly exposure. Two sleeping rooms flank the front and back of the gallery, one south and one north, with the south bedroom extending outward as a small balcony.
The ensuite subtly expresses the clients’ individual taste with patterned tile and a custom built cedar tub which sits under an oversized skylight for late nigh star gazing. Both formally and in space - this home celebrates its edge and urban condition while introvert in itself enough to create a considered and inviting home.
Material Used:
1. Facade cladding: Masonry, Modular Brick, Hebron
2. Flooring: Poured Concrete w/ radiant in-floor heat
3. Doors: Tilt + Turn, Innotech
4. Windows: Tilt + Turn, Innotech & PlyGem Vinyl Casement
5. Interior lighting: Dual Pendant, Lambert et Fils
