Shudell House

2K) Shudell House 

Toronto

Named after the client’s Southern Alberta ranch, the 2K) House is located in Toronto’s ‘Pocket’ neighbourhood and next to the former Greenwood Avenue cluster of brickyards, where clay was extracted and manufactured into bricks for use in the construction of Toronto’s early development. The three-story home and laneway house reinterpret and transform the long and linear, Victorian house type to create new opportunities for natural light and a generosity of space, that the historical type of housing lacks.

The three-story house features articulated and patterned buff and brown hand-crafted brick. By reengaging with traditional masonry design and techniques, the 2K) House speaks to Toronto’s rich masonry past while putting forth a new typology that none-the-less addresses contemporary living in the city.

With an ‘aging in place’ objective, the house is designed with the ground floor situated at grade to ensure accessibility ease. An elevator, along with dimensionally generous interior circulation and spaces, ensures accessibility throughout the three-storey house. Included in the ‘aging in place’ objective, the laneway house will provide an independent living space for the client’s kids as they reach adulthood, or for other future living arrangements such as a live-in caregiver.

The ground floor reinterprets the Toronto porch with a half-covered forecourt with a double cantilever supporting the brick mass overhead. Like the traditional porch, the forecourt provides the house with a neighbourly street presence. The forecourt also provides a deep threshold and transitional space to the living room allowing this principal room to be both open to the street and protected at the same time.

Further in, the two-storey high dining room is the everyday activity centre for the whole family. As such, it is akin to an ‘atrium’ or courtyard of the Roman Domus. At the rear is a generous and open kitchen and a back-entry mudroom and water-closet.

On the second floor are three bedrooms for the client’s children, a bathroom, a laundry closet and an overlook of the dining room. The third floor contains the master bedroom and ensuite, as well as, the client’s home office.

The laneway house is designed to ensure the longevity of a large maple tree at the south-east corner of the property. To avoid interruption and damage to the tree’s root system, the living spaces of the laneway house are suspended overhead by a steel ‘v’ configured column on helical-piers and a double cantilevered HSS beam on east and to the west by a mechanical service space.

Both the main house and the laneway house are designed to considerably surpass the energy criteria of OBC SB12. A high efficiency HVAC system with radiant floor heat within the basement and ground floor polished concrete floors and an electrical infrastructure for future photovoltaic roof panels will be installed. Importantly, the laneway house ‘carport’ configuration provides the client with space to energize an electrical car.

Credits

Kevin Weiss – Principal, Weiss Architecture & Urbanism Limited