My House: This Wildly Colorful Vancouver Home Was Designed Like a Shoe

On a street of gray Vancouver specials (a boxy style of home mass-produced from the 1960s through the ’80s) and plain-vanilla, vinyl-sided ranchers, the Fluevog family’s jagged, mint-colored house, with its wild, wonderful cutouts, will make you look twice. "The neighbors call it a ‘shape sorter’ house," says homeowner Ali Palmer-Fluevog, who lives there with her husband, Adrian Fluevog, and their two young sons, Jonah and Lucas. It’s a moniker she and Adrian—CEO of John Fluevog Shoes, the cult fave Canadian brand founded by his dad in 1970—take as a compliment. "I’ve grown up making ‘unique soles for unique souls,’" says Adrian. "I’m used to quirkiness."

Vancouver firm MA+HG Architects is to thank for this eye-catching, 3,155-square-foot salute to Euclidean geometry. "We were trying to riff on this notion of ‘How would you create architectural designs in a similar way to how you would design footwear?’" explains MA+HG coprincipal Harley Grusko. "They use two-dimensional patterns to create three-dimensional objects, so we developed the facades as a singular pattern and folded it to create the home’s shape."