Residential Renovation & Addition
Toronto, Canada | Completed 2025

Photographer: Riley Snelling
Stylist: Kaela Shaw
Contractor: Encore Projects
Kitchen: Scavolini

South Hill, perhaps a younger sibling of neighbouring Forest Hill to the north from which it gets its name, is nevertheless an exclusive enclave bounded by Spadina, St Clair, Avenue, and Dupont set amongst the towering trees and undulating topography of the Davenport escarpment. Straddling the boundary between downtown and midtown, it is a tight-knit community with architectural styles varying widely from street to street. Here, the standard urban grid, lined with predominantly red-brick homes typical of the Toronto’s historic vernacular style, collides with the crests, valleys, and meandering roads tracing the ravine that cuts abruptly through, severing the neighbourhood into distinct pockets. In one of these quiet pockets, our clients—a young family with two elementary school-aged girls—looked to transform their traditional brick semi; maintaining the home’s solid bones while improving functionality and infusing a touch of elegance reminiscent of a classic London terrace house.

The holistic transformation draws upon timeless references infused with a contemporary sensibility, calm material palette, and subtle, refined details balancing expansive living spaces and intimate private moments across the home’s four levels. Two of the foundational moves were centering the kitchen within the ground floor and opening up a four-storey rear elevation, establishing a unique relationship to the south facing rear yard. The narrow footprint required a creative approach to program distribution and particularly how living spaces connect to the backyard. Moving the kitchen to the centre of the home allows the primary entertaining, living space to span the full width of the home, overlook the backyard, and enjoy natural light from its southern exposure. A generous stair descends from the living room into the yard, while the remaining width of the lot is carved away in a series of terraced landings leading toward a sunken basement entrance. This allows a more casual lower-level family room to have unobstructed access to light and fresh air though a full height, folding glass wall. An efficient mudroom at this lower level consolidates access to the house from the backyard and rear garage through a more utilitarian and functional circulation path avoiding the accumulation of shoes, jackets, and clutter at the living room entry above on the ground floor.

The kitchen, while shifted to the centre of the home, is well-lit with an obscured view to the side yard. An expansive frosted glass window, flush with the counter and flanked by millwork columns containing the fridge and oven, washes the space in diffuse natural light. Delicate fluted glass upper cabinets shimmer with specular highlights contrasted against the dark millwork with subtle green undertones. With the living areas concentrated at the rear of the home, a cozy dining area with built-in banquette faces the new front porch at the front of the home. A contemporary interpretation of a traditional glass chandelier is framed in the front window, illuminating an intimate and domestic vignette from the street.

Traditional and contemporary details are paired in complementary dialogue throughout the home. Tonal wall mouldings are offset by contemporary sculpted ceiling elements that define thresholds and delineate different programs in the open ground floor plan. The tightly wound curve of the central stair is expressed in a minimal steel stringer and paired with traditional wood pickets, elevated with an elegantly simple tapered profile. A skylight caps the four-storey stair, further bathing the centre of the home with natural light. In the primary ensuite, an illuminated, fluted glass arch echoes a familiar form in an unconventional application to provide a dramatic terminus to the bedroom suite. The juxtaposition of familiar forms with surprising details contribute to a sense of authenticity that is inspired by international influences but deeply grounded in an unmistakably Torontonian context.