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A big reno for a tight space
Architect Paul Reuber brightens up a dowdy Forest Hill Village home. 'It's a hundred little different things rather than one big gesture' DAVE LEBLANC
From Friday's Globe and Mail
November 6, 2008 at 5:13 PM EST
Give the best architects an inch, and they'll give you a mile … of usable space. If it's Paul Reuber, you'll get plenty of smiles, too.
Generating smiles in Forest Hill Village is a quirky, sunny-yellow, cantilevered box addition that manages — with very little actual square footage — to transform a simple, arts-and-crafty house into an expansive, happy home that has its owners, Ninia and Dan, as pleased as punch and passersby giggling with envy.
Blink and you'll miss the only other exterior intervention Mr. Reuber has done to this once-dowdy home: A scant 3-1/2-foot-wide, two-storey, skylit chunk tacked on to the south elevation. It allows such incredible things to happen inside that Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's "less is more" just doesn't describe it. How 'bout "less is the moon," since that's what Mr. Reuber has delivered.
Confused? Don't be. Imagine a three-storey home with great bones on the outside and very little, save for a stone fireplace, to recommend it on the inside. Imagine a corner lot so tight, there's virtually no yard along the side, and the one in back is so microscopic, a bladder-challenged chihuahua would demand toilet training. Now, imagine being given the task of adding a new family room, master bedroom and subterranean ping-pong room. Oh, and how about beefing up the small kitchen, too?
After a few thousand deft flicks of his drafting pen, Mr. Reuber has given his clients (and their three children) all of that and more in a home that explodes with energy and, more important, functionality, without resorting to gimmickry.
It started as a simple kitchen expansion. It turned into a full-scale, down-to-the-bricks renovation of the old house (no studs in this Depression-era home, just plaster-and-lath on double-brick walls), with the 3-1/2-foot-wide and yellow box additions being added as Mr. Reuber, over the course of many family dinners, studied how his clients lived and asked what they demanded from their house.
"The other two architects we tried before Paul did not spend time with the family," Dan says.
A modern and airy staircase opposite the foyer — the formal centre-hall plan was retained — allows views into the 3-1/2-foot-wide addition. To open up the interior to this tiny addition, the home's weight had to be balanced on a steel beam, but it was worth it. The gains are a new door (where there never was one) that opens to a more direct route to the park, shopping and subway; storage galore; and a two-piece bathroom. In the kitchen, the addition acts as a ventilation tower, directing heat from the stove up through a remote-controlled skylight. On the second floor, a former brick window opening becomes a balcony.
New kitchen millwork is representative of the tens of thousands of dollars of similar millwork throughout the home. It's deliciously detailed by the architect and expertly executed by Design 2100 Inc., yet still playful because of the repeated use of Formica facing with a "wiggly worm" pattern.
"I think that's really what this house is all about; it's a hundred little different things rather than one big gesture," says Mr. Reuber, pointing to the kitchen island "cone" made from layers of silky-smooth sanded plywood. "One of the major obligations [of architecture] is helping people just get through the day," he adds, laughing. "We all want the lyricism and the look but, on the other hand, the shelves in the right place mean a lot, too."
In that big smile of a yellow box, lyricism and functionality go hand-in-hand. The ping-pong room is so flooded with light it doesn't feel subterranean; its open, square stairway links it to the main-floor family room "so we don't lose our kids," says Dan.
In the family room, accent colours represent each family member (these are then used as the main colours in each bedroom), and the massive windows drink in the entire twisty street. On the second floor, windows turn the master bedroom into a watchtower or modernist turret.
Stretching up three levels from the basement to the master bedroom is the original exterior wall — formerly underground, acid-etched cinderblock in the basement and beaten-up brick on the first and second floors — to remind the homeowners of where the house once terminated. Clerestories in the master open to vent hot air, so air-conditioning is almost never needed in summer, and a modern radiator system allows for thermostats in every room, which keeps everyone happily in their comfort zone.
Adding to the happiness is Mr. Reuber's explosive colour-palette. Jarring at first, after a few minutes of acclimatization, visitors may find themselves seeking the architect's help in breaking their overwhelming bonds with beige.
"Colour theory is often an adjunct like nutrition is in medicine — you can take it or leave it," he offers, "and that's why architects rely on white or off-white or just a dash [of colour] because they never studied it enough to know how to mix them."
Besides colours, this home successfully mixes functionality with style, rough with smooth surfaces, adults with children and, on the exterior, old architecture with new. It's modest enough not to offend yet playful enough to cause a reaction.
"You wouldn't have thought a yellow box in fashionable Forest Hill would have been welcomed with open arms," says Mr. Reuber.
"I've had so many comments," Ninia adds, "and people say, 'It makes me smile' or 'It makes me happy,' and I say, 'Yeah, it's what it does to me, too.'"
Architect Paul Reuber brightens up a dowdy Forest Hill Village home. 'It's a hundred little different things rather than one big gesture' DAVE LEBLANC
From Friday's Globe and Mail
November 6, 2008 at 5:13 PM EST
Give the best architects an inch, and they'll give you a mile … of usable space. If it's Paul Reuber, you'll get plenty of smiles, too.
Generating smiles in Forest Hill Village is a quirky, sunny-yellow, cantilevered box addition that manages — with very little actual square footage — to transform a simple, arts-and-crafty house into an expansive, happy home that has its owners, Ninia and Dan, as pleased as punch and passersby giggling with envy.
Blink and you'll miss the only other exterior intervention Mr. Reuber has done to this once-dowdy home: A scant 3-1/2-foot-wide, two-storey, skylit chunk tacked on to the south elevation. It allows such incredible things to happen inside that Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's "less is more" just doesn't describe it. How 'bout "less is the moon," since that's what Mr. Reuber has delivered.
Confused? Don't be. Imagine a three-storey home with great bones on the outside and very little, save for a stone fireplace, to recommend it on the inside. Imagine a corner lot so tight, there's virtually no yard along the side, and the one in back is so microscopic, a bladder-challenged chihuahua would demand toilet training. Now, imagine being given the task of adding a new family room, master bedroom and subterranean ping-pong room. Oh, and how about beefing up the small kitchen, too?
After a few thousand deft flicks of his drafting pen, Mr. Reuber has given his clients (and their three children) all of that and more in a home that explodes with energy and, more important, functionality, without resorting to gimmickry.
It started as a simple kitchen expansion. It turned into a full-scale, down-to-the-bricks renovation of the old house (no studs in this Depression-era home, just plaster-and-lath on double-brick walls), with the 3-1/2-foot-wide and yellow box additions being added as Mr. Reuber, over the course of many family dinners, studied how his clients lived and asked what they demanded from their house.
"The other two architects we tried before Paul did not spend time with the family," Dan says.
A modern and airy staircase opposite the foyer — the formal centre-hall plan was retained — allows views into the 3-1/2-foot-wide addition. To open up the interior to this tiny addition, the home's weight had to be balanced on a steel beam, but it was worth it. The gains are a new door (where there never was one) that opens to a more direct route to the park, shopping and subway; storage galore; and a two-piece bathroom. In the kitchen, the addition acts as a ventilation tower, directing heat from the stove up through a remote-controlled skylight. On the second floor, a former brick window opening becomes a balcony.
New kitchen millwork is representative of the tens of thousands of dollars of similar millwork throughout the home. It's deliciously detailed by the architect and expertly executed by Design 2100 Inc., yet still playful because of the repeated use of Formica facing with a "wiggly worm" pattern.
"I think that's really what this house is all about; it's a hundred little different things rather than one big gesture," says Mr. Reuber, pointing to the kitchen island "cone" made from layers of silky-smooth sanded plywood. "One of the major obligations [of architecture] is helping people just get through the day," he adds, laughing. "We all want the lyricism and the look but, on the other hand, the shelves in the right place mean a lot, too."
In that big smile of a yellow box, lyricism and functionality go hand-in-hand. The ping-pong room is so flooded with light it doesn't feel subterranean; its open, square stairway links it to the main-floor family room "so we don't lose our kids," says Dan.
In the family room, accent colours represent each family member (these are then used as the main colours in each bedroom), and the massive windows drink in the entire twisty street. On the second floor, windows turn the master bedroom into a watchtower or modernist turret.
Stretching up three levels from the basement to the master bedroom is the original exterior wall — formerly underground, acid-etched cinderblock in the basement and beaten-up brick on the first and second floors — to remind the homeowners of where the house once terminated. Clerestories in the master open to vent hot air, so air-conditioning is almost never needed in summer, and a modern radiator system allows for thermostats in every room, which keeps everyone happily in their comfort zone.
Adding to the happiness is Mr. Reuber's explosive colour-palette. Jarring at first, after a few minutes of acclimatization, visitors may find themselves seeking the architect's help in breaking their overwhelming bonds with beige.
"Colour theory is often an adjunct like nutrition is in medicine — you can take it or leave it," he offers, "and that's why architects rely on white or off-white or just a dash [of colour] because they never studied it enough to know how to mix them."
Besides colours, this home successfully mixes functionality with style, rough with smooth surfaces, adults with children and, on the exterior, old architecture with new. It's modest enough not to offend yet playful enough to cause a reaction.
"You wouldn't have thought a yellow box in fashionable Forest Hill would have been welcomed with open arms," says Mr. Reuber.
"I've had so many comments," Ninia adds, "and people say, 'It makes me smile' or 'It makes me happy,' and I say, 'Yeah, it's what it does to me, too.'"