Project Information
| LOCATION | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| AREA | 3,500 Square Feet |
| PHOTOGRAPHY | Doublespace Photography |
| STATUS | COMPLETED 2020 |
Exterior View: High Park Residence
Table of Contents
- Project Information
- Exterior View: High Park Residence
- Interior View: High Park Residence
- Batay-Csorba Architects
This beautiful custom home design was built for a couple with Italian heritage in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The building pays homage to design accents common to Toronto’s residential building topography. The architects have placed special attention to design cues which encourage mobility, convenience, and sensitivity.
The retired occupants felt it was essential to have access to parking on-site and wanted to avoid suburban elements such as a front garage. Instead, a carport was central to overall project organization and magically carves the front facade to support a processional entry that pays homage to an architectural feature known as the portico in Roman architecture. The Portico gently covers and extends the home entrance as a vault or collonade.
Toronto’s residential streets are commonly designed with front porches (verandas) instead of garages. This creates a common transition between home and the street. Vaulted porches are very common in Toronto’s Victorian homes. For this project, the carved carport creates an inverted porch and enclosed presence from street view. Visitors are pulled in by the warm yet attractive lightwell cutting through the building’s height and placed at the end of the carport. For the introverted, space is enclosed, private and intimate for entry.
Interior View: High Park Residence
The project’s geometric beauty is emphasized by simplicity, services and entry tucked into a linear bar that runs adjacent to the vault. Upon visitors entering the home, their journey starts with a compressed service ‘bar’, paving the way into the ground floor’s extensive but airy living space. The ground floor’s geometry connects all spaces, fulfilling the client’s wish for connectivity between food preparation, eating, and social entertainment.
The project ensures the barrel vault brings together living spaces. The vaulted ceiling emulates tangential peels and cuts, articulation, and airy spaciousness.
The vault is cut at the length of the kitchen, remains intact with the dining room and living room before it unfolds into the backyard. Connected spaces are delineated and a beautiful natural light floods the deep and narrow space. The kitchen is central to this floorplan and absorbs natural light from the skylight.
The ground floor of the High Park Residence is well-connected and unimpeded with a floor plan current that allows the occupants to move freely. The second floor has rooms that are unified by bridges. Rooms can be organized in a narrow allotment, allowing natural light to the floor of each room and the ground floor.
The second floor is serviced by a bathroom, laundry, and stairs tucked into the ‘bar’. The master suite, study, and bedroom are arranged from the front to the back of the house. A sliver space between study and bedroom allows both rooms to share natural daylight from the lightwell and facade’s dormer window. The master suite is cleansed with light from the home’s skylight above the kitchen and the back facade.
Batay-Csorba Architects
Batay-Csorba Architects (B-CA) is an architecture and interior design studio that uses spatial massing, natural light, and tactile materials to translate buildings into aspirational forms and experiences.
The studio’s work evolves to explore:
- historical reference
- typology
- materiality
- context
It establishes the story through:
- architecture
- furniture
- landscape
- interiors
- signage
- branding
- infrastructural systems
The studio challenges premeditated ideas to rethink standard typologies and seeks alternatives. This project exemplifies architecture with simple nuances, playfulness, overt refinement, and crafted outputs that delight occupants and guests with unexpected design.
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