What’s old is new again, at least when it comes to older neighborhoods and how well they suit many young families today. Early 20th century suburbs offer walkable scale, bikeable proximity to work and shopping, and a lived-in feeling that newer developments often lack. But the very cohesiveness of this 1920s-era Toronto neighborhood made inserting a modernist infill house a delicate matter. Architect Drew Mandel and builders Marcus and Robert Passier rose to the challenge, satisfying their clients’ thoroughly contemporary program—and meeting a stack of 21st-century regulations—while leaving the urban fabric even stronger than they found it.
Filling In Means Fitting In
“It’s a very cohesive community,” Mandel says, “and this was the first tear-down and replacement on the street, so there was a good deal of scrutiny.” But rather than mimic the neighboring English cottage- and Tudor revival-style houses, Mandel drew on the deeper, more abstract themes that also unify the block: “The rhythm of the street, the two-tone materiality, the setbacks, the massing. A lot of the houses have recessed corners,” he says, “so we took ‘bites’ out of the floor plate to get light and reduce the massing.”
The primary exterior material is limestone cut into masonry-sized blocks to mimic the coursing of the adjacent brick houses. The zoning ordinance strongly suggested a peaked roof, and Mandel obliged by capping the third-floor master suite with a gable form clad in aluminum. “We painted to emulate zinc,” he says. Recessing this penthouse-like element from the building’s main façades reduced its visual impact while also creating roof decks at the front and rear.
A Modest Site Suggests a Vertical Approach
Mandel’s clients are a growing family, with an array of at-home activities that required more space than is typical in a house with such a compact footprint. “It really was a four-floor [program], given this lot,” Mandel says, “but they didn’t like basement spaces. That pushed us to make a basement that doesn’t feel like a basement.” The key move here is a light well bounded by a board-formed concrete retaining wall, which funnels ample daylight through a large on-grade opening.
“We took some primary functions and put them in what otherwise wouldn’t have been prime space,” says Mandel, who located an office, gym, and media room at the lower level. While sound isolated from the spaces above, the basement shares a visual link with the first-floor living room, and with a flexible open space adjacent to the children’s bedrooms at the second floor. The result is something of a multilevel family room, Mandel says. “You have three interconnected spaces, and the third floor is its own master apartment.” Despite the house’s relatively modest dimensions, “you have flexible elements that expand its use beyond its size.”
Personalized Details Give Modernism a Soft Touch
The first-floor plan is dominated by a single open room that contains entry, dining, kitchen, and living areas. “The whole ground floor is centered on that,” Mandel says. “It’s basically one big, open, flexible space.” Architects tend to like that kind of layout, Mandel says, but he also seeks opportunities to build in “little moments” that reflect the way individual clients really use a house. “I try to give it a layer of personality,” he says, “so it’s not just a pure, anonymous modernist house.”
As a hat-tip to the neighborhood convention of covered front entries, Robert Passier framed the front door with a deep plate-steel box that serves as both canopy and stoop. “We just extruded a rectangle,” Mandel says. “There are little tiny LEDs buried in the top.” The owners will most often enter from the detached garage at the rear, however, so Passier fitted out the mudroom with niches for keys and pocket change. He installed the living room’s sealed fireplace unit with a custom blackened steel surround that incorporates wood storage and a recessed display shelf.
Site Repair Is Part of the Program
The same personalized approach extends beyond the house and into the landscape. One of the owners cycles to work, so the one-car garage includes a separate area for bike parking. Mandel also used the garage, and a bench built into its side wall, to help define outdoor living spaces, one centered on a barbecue and another on a backyard fire pit.
Hidden from sight is the system of drains, holding tanks, and bubblers—unheard of when this neighborhood was planned—that collects, evaporates, and percolates surface runoff into the drainage-challenged soil. Mandel says, “We’re the big drain for that whole block.” A green roof over the garage minimizes the site’s impermeable surfaces while also improving the view from the master bedroom and its rear-facing roof deck. Like every house—and perhaps more than most—this one has very specific jobs to do and rigorous standards to meet. But ultimately, Mandel says, “the subject matter is living, so we’ve tried to celebrate the rituals of everyday life.”
