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Project Name: An Explorers’ Retreat

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Date Completed: December 2019

Architect: Richard Wengle

Construction Company: JTF Homes

Meaningful residential design thrives in the prose of everyday family life. It is created through quiet luxury and palpable quality, attention to detail, well-crafted functionality and clean, simple lines. It comes into its own in the warmth and joy of this 650m2 home by Douglas Design Studio for a travel-loving family. The clients’ work and personal life was built around exploration and sustainable contributions to communities all over the world. In their home-base in Toronto, they wanted a comfortable space for themselves and their daughters. This 5-storey home (3 above and 2 basement levels) is specially designed to complement the rhythm of life within its walls. The result is a legacy home, in the truest sense of the words.

A large living and dining room, once divided with a wide arch, has been restructured for flexible options for family gatherings as well as more formal entertaining by providing a conveniently adaptable seating solution. Deeper into the heart of the home, the main family room flows from kitchen to breakfast space to outdoor living. Cleverly partitioned functional areas, such as the adjoining glass-walled office, accommodate the client’s request never to feel cut off from the family, while allowing for unfettered productivity. Dubbed ‘travel room’, a two-storey modern library becomes a tranquil, secluded space to retreat, read and dream of travels past and future. This layout is inhabited by ample light and a neutral yet warm palette of colours and textures: natural whites and greys are blended with warm woods, punctuated with blues and intensified by saffron accents. It favours mindfulness and savours art and artifacts, collected and gifted over years of work. From antique African hand-carved shields to a Haida Gwaii totem pole, carved for them in appreciation for their services to their local communities, personal details are thoughtfully composed to capture the essence of the life this family has built for itself.

The theatre room is on the first lower level of the home. A large custom sectional can easily seat 10 people and the room is encased in remote controlled, self-stacking, bespoke drapery which softens the acoustics for an enhanced movie watching experience. The curtains can be drawn back to reveal a floor to ceiling window overlooking the two-storey multifunctional gymnasium, which provides a dedicated area for the family’s shared athleticism. The regulation height basketball net retracts to convert the function to a squash or racquetball court. Spatially, this vista integrates the sports court while providing seating for family and friends to watch.

Douglas Design Studio’s client wanted to avoid a cold home. Coming from multicultural backgrounds, they wanted to see their love of art and travel reflected in their Toronto home. The goal was to create an unpretentious space that would serve as a warm and welcoming retreat, both for the core family and a wide circle of family and friends. A soft, neutral colour story based on individual preferences was therefore combined with a coordinated palette of textures and patterns. Since the sightlines of this home allow for visibility from the front entry all the way to the back-door, lighting was a key feature for Douglas Design Studio, using repetition to lead the eye into the home. Artisan leather wrapped doors and handles, matched by details on the ceiling fixtures, separate the public entertaining space from the more private family spaces.