I have a story in The Globe and Mail today about a modest but fascinating little project: a house renovation by Superkul in a back laneway of Kensington Market. The architects took a burned-out worker’s cottage and turned it into a spacious, totally contemporary house. In the story I talk about the gabled roof (an idea of fresh interest in Toronto architectural circles) and the dormer windows, which are masterfully detailed to frame views and provide privacy.

Pictures after the jump.

Tonight (Oct 4) at Ryerson, Colin Neufeld of 5468796 Architecture is speaking about their work. You know 5468796: I wrote about their Bloc_10 apartment project here and for the Globe and Mail.

Here is another of their projects: a six-storey office building on downtown Winnipeg’s Hargrave Street for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. It relies on one simple, smart move to define its massing and to compose its facades.

Frank Gehry refers to Toronto as his hometown. Yes, he left here over 60 years ago, but clearly he retains a sentimental attachment to the city. And yet he has never designed a new building here. That could change – in a big way – if David Mirvish succeeds in building three very tall condo towers and two new galleries at this location, replacing the 2000-seat Princess of Wales Theatre and three adjacent loft buildings.

Here is a story I wrote about it for Architect magazine.

After the jump,  some models and images:

In The Globe and Mail, I introduce the young firm BlackLAB Architects and their first completed project – the home of principals Tony Round and Andrea Kordos in Toronto’s Bloordale area.

It’s modest in scope but meticulously and creatively executed, on no budget.

A changeroom and lunchroom for bus drivers. That is the very prosaic program of this very beautiful building in Oakville (a Toronto suburb), which I recently wrote about for Azure. (PDF is here.)

In The Globe recently I had a story on an unusual condo: the home of architect John Shnier, of Kohn Shnier, and his wife Patricia Gaviria. It’s an unusually large and open apartment. In many ways much like the unstructured raw lofts that were the dream of a previous generation of artists, but in a very urban context – on top of a boutique hotel. Shnier is a great architect and a character, and this place, in subtle ways, reflects that. It’s got white Astroturf, curtains that recall first-generation spacecraft, and travertine that evokes a romantic weekend in Roma. Do read the story. And, as a bonus, see these beautiful photographs by John Shnier himself…

I wrote September’s cover story for Dwell magazine about Kenneth Montague’s home. A familiar figure in Toronto’s art world, Kenneth runs his own gallery, Wedge Curatorial Projects, and he’s also a dentist of note.

The architecture of his apartment is by David Anand Peterson of DP Studio. But Montague himself is a fascinating guy, with a past in music, deep good taste in art, and a fine eye for design. It all comes out at home.

Here’s the story on Dwell’s website.

Photo by Naomi Finlay. 

I’m following the work of a young collective who call themselves The Practice of Everyday Design. Despite the dryly generic name, they work in the fertile territory where architecture and art intersect. They’ve made a creative design installation - alongside artistic comment on monster-home culture – and now, they’ve renovated a house in the suburb of Mississauga. The program was simple: fix a room over the garage of a sidesplit ’70s house and make it into a peaceful den.

This weekend I headed to the Brick Works for the market, and also to see a smart exhibition of design installations. Design by Nature is the theme, and the show brings together an array of works from emerging artists working in that fertile, unstable territory between design and art.

First there’s Shrine, by Scott Eunson and Lubo Brezina. It’s a mind-expanding play with perspective – a reconstruction of a Southern Ontario barn, in a distorted, shrunken form that does a mysterious trick with scale. I saw a previous version of it at Come Up To My Room and it was, and is, a tremendous work.

Here’s a previous iteration..