In every prosperous time and place, of course, successful people are occasionally struck with the Xanadu fantasy--the longing to go beyond merely providing for themselves comfortable places to live, to contribute something substantial to the history and culture of architecture. And to be sure, Integral House does embody a formidable amount of advanced research, both formal and technical, on the part of the architects. There are no half-measures here; every cranny and angle and fixture has been thought out with rigorous care.
Because history has been invoked by the client, history alone can be the final judge of whether Integral House will be regarded by the future as a masterpiece of 21st-century architectural design, or as merely another piece of evidence for the excesses of Toronto’s most recent Gilded Age.
My hunch, however, is that the impact of this deeply interesting, fastidiously researched and designed building will endure long past the era of its construction--even if it can’t quite decide whether it’s a cultural institution or a private residence. In common with its venerable precedents--Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoie, Mies van der Rohe’s Tugendhat House, and especially Aalto’s Villa Mairea come to mind--Integral House represents an effective experimental think-through of the problem of the luxury dwelling in modern times, and, as well, a remarkable contribution to the architecture of exuberant aesthetic gesture.
