How They Pulled It Off: Custom-Built Record Storage

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.

When designing a new home for a Montreal recording engineer and his graphic designer wife, architect Natalie Dionne knew the design needed to make space for music. "She really likes graphic objects and minimalism, but it was important to add space for the sound system and the husband’s album collection," says Dionne, principal of the Montreal-based firm Natalie Dionne Architecture.

Located in the verdant Ahuntsic-Cartierville neighborhood of Montreal, the house needed to play well with the surrounding homes, many of which are in the style of mid-century California bungalows. Taking inspiration from the clean lines, brick facades, and pronounced horizontality of its neighbors, the home borrows a 1960s architectural language but injects contemporary geometries. 

"I wanted to respect the other buildings and integrate this project on its street," says Dionne. The home’s brick cladding brings a familiar texture  to the exterior, which is broken up by a mixture of horizontal and vertical window openings on all four sides that lend a contemporary feel.