Situated on a narrow lot in an older neighbourhood, the Skygarden House provides outdoor living spaces on multiple levels to address the owners’ desire for a better connection to the home’s natural surroundings. The owners used to spend their weekends at their country home - they wanted their home in the city to mimic this bucolic experience in an urban environment, and they wanted their home to be as sustainable as possible.

Although the house is only 2,420 square feet, it feels much larger—its rooms expand beyond the interior to a series of useable outdoor spaces, each with its own unique character and varying level of privacy. The project gets its name from an intimate exterior space off the third floor master bedroom - clad in thermally-treated ash and with an opening carved into the roof for natural light, access to rainwater, and ample views of green, this “skygarden” functions as a unique outdoor room open to the elements. Maintaining the existing footprint of the original house, only the two side exterior walls were retained. Referencing the traditional domestic scale and form of its neighbours, the Skygarden House presents a fresh and graphic interpretation of the traditional pitched roof with a sublimely clean elevation. In contrast to the solid brick side elevations, the front and rear façades are almost fully transparent. Planes of floor-to-ceiling windows, doors and spandrel panels, create a physical and visual connection to the outdoors. They frame views to the exterior, bringing natural light and the experience of the changing seasons into the interior.

The complete overhaul of the house resulted in a significant reduction in the house’s ecological footprint, using a combination of active and passive design systems and strategies. The transformation of these century-old inefficient dwellings sets a precedent for urban renewal and demonstrates an approach to modern intervention in an older neighbourhood by respecting the context and scale but with a distinctly contemporary palette and design.

Check out our BLOAAg article for more information. Publish Date : 2021/Jul/07