How They Pulled It Off: An Asymmetrical Facade Clad in Diamond-Shaped Tiles
Geometric forms and a tall, slim silhouette make the most of the home’s narrow site.
Geometric forms and a tall, slim silhouette make the most of the home’s narrow site.
Welcome to How They Pulled It Off where we take a close look at one particularly challenging aspect of a home design and get the nitty-gritty details about how it became a reality.
A steeply sloping site and a narrow plot may not be the ideal recipe for a unique contemporary home, but they were the starting ingredients for a growing family in Toronto when they reached out to local architecture firm Reigo & Bauer.
The four-bedroom home features a front elevation with offset windows of different sizes that create a dynamic facade that follows the angle of the roof line. Like the rest of the home—and its surrounding mature trees—all of the windows are tall and narrow.
Photo by Doublespace Photography
The homeowners—two professionals who work locally in Toronto—had inherited the property, which had a lot going for it: a convenient location in Toronto’s Beaches neighborhood within walking distance to Lake Ontario’s public beaches, a mature deciduous forest behind the property creating a lush green backdrop, and the home’s placement on a cul-de-sac with a quiet, neighborhood-y feel.
Urban infill sites, like this home, are the types of projects where Reigo & Bauer like to take cues from the local vernacular and surrounding buildings.
Photo by Doublespace Photography
However, the bungalow was too small for the growing family, who were expecting their first child by the time the design process started with Merike and Stephen Bauer of Reigo & Bauer; they had a second by the time the project wrapped up! "The homeowners wanted to create a comfortable space for living with their daughters that reflected their appreciation for contemporary design," Merike explains. An expansion or renovation of the bungalow wouldn’t give them what they were looking for, so a new home was designed for the plot.
The same fiber cement shingle was used at most of the vertical surfaces and the roof, with the exception of select areas at the entry and some facets at the side roof. A skylight, nearly hidden from the street, helps to bring daylight into the middle of the upper floor.
Photo by Doublespace Photography
See the full story on Dwell.com: How They Pulled It Off: An Asymmetrical Facade Clad in Diamond-Shaped Tiles
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