Location: Toronto, Ontario
Architect: Anya Moryoussef Architect

Commissioned by a retired schoolteacher, this Micro House is a highly inventive transformation of a single-storey worker’s cottage on Craven Road—a street featuring some of the smallest houses in Toronto, and a unique architectural outpost in an increasingly unaffordable city. The light-filled, ethereal refuge engenders a sense of expansiveness and well-being through the strategic interplay of volumes and apertures, connecting the house to the outdoors without sacrificing privacy. The small home is an intimate expression of the client, and its sensitive approach to aging-in-place is intended to allow her to remain in her close-knit community for years to come.

The creative vision entailed turning a rundown bungalow built tight to the property lines into an ethereal and accessible refuge. Moryoussef worked inventively to engender a sense of expansiveness and well-being by prioritizing connections with the outdoors through interior volumes and strategic apertures. Rebuilding the cottage from the foundation up required tactical ingenuity and innovative collaboration with the builder to optimize and expedite construction. To honour and reinterpret the typology, the legal non-conforming footprint, existing foundations, and wall heights were retained, while the form, plan, and roof volume were reimagined to breathe new life and light into the small home.

 Photo Credit: doublespace photography

Craven Road—a single-sided street that features some of the smallest detached houses in Toronto—represents an unusual and notable urban condition. This neighbourhood, which was historically home to lower-income residents, remains a close-knit community and unique architectural outpost in an increasingly unaffordable city. Within an urban planning context that generally encourages typological homogeneity for single-family residences, Moryoussef fought to retain the street’s existing vernacular fabric. She ultimately leveraged the lot’s horizontal density to create a salubrious home for a proprietor of modest means who wanted to remain an active member of her established community for the long-term.

True to its name, Micro House embodies an approach to holistic sustainability that addresses three critical questions: how can we create less waste via demolition and construction, consume less energy and materials, and live “smaller” overall? The reuse of existing materials and particularly carbon-intensive ones (concrete foundations) were prioritized in the context of an 840 square-foot home whose design maximizes every inch, minimizes energy consumption, prioritizes passive ventilation, features salvaged appliances, and emphasizes the interplay of light and shadow to enhance the owner’s everyday well-being and quality of life.

It demonstrates that living small and sustainably is an opportunity, not a sacrifice; it also proves that ambitious design is not antithetical to modest budgets and aging-in-place mandates. This project also testifies to how empathic collaboration between architect and client can advance design standards through thoughtful measures that respond compassionately to a person’s needs and desires.

This blOAAg post is part of a series exploring the OAA’s 17 Design Excellence Finalists for 2022, as selected by our jury.

Click here to see other projects from this current award cycle.