Residential Renovation & Addition
Toronto, Canada | Completed 2025

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

South Hill is a residential enclave set amongst the towering trees and undulating topography of the Davenport escarpment. Straddling the boundary between downtown and midtown Toronto, the neighbourhood occupies a unique condition where the city’s traditional urban grid collides with the crests, valleys, and meandering roads of the ravine landscape. The ravine cuts abruptly through the neighbourhood, severing it into a series of distinct pockets lined with predominantly red-brick homes. 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 introducing a quiet elegance reminiscent of a classic London terrace house.

The holistic transformation balances timeless references with a contemporary sensibility, expressed through a calm material palette and refined detailing across the home’s four levels. Two foundational interventions were centering the kitchen within the ground floor and opening up a four-storey rear elevation, allowing the primary living space to occupy the full width of the home while establishing a unique relationship to the south-facing rear yard. Together, these interventions reorganize the home around light, landscape, and a more connected sequence of living spaces.

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. Below, a full-height folding glass wall opens the lower-level family room directly to the landscape, while an adjacent mudroom consolidates access from the backyard and rear garage.

Anchoring the ground floor, the kitchen is illuminated by an expansive frosted-glass window flush with the counter and flanked by millwork columns containing the fridge and oven. Delicate fluted glass upper cabinets shimmer against dark millwork with subtle green undertones. Opposite the living spaces, a cozy dining area with a built-in banquette overlooks the new front porch. A contemporary interpretation of a traditional glass chandelier is framed in the front window, illuminating an intimate and domestic vignette from the street.

This interplay between traditional and contemporary elements continues throughout the home. Tonal wall mouldings are offset by contemporary sculpted ceiling elements that define thresholds and delineate distinct living areas in the open ground-floor plan. The tightly wound curve of the central stair is expressed through a slender steel structure and paired with traditional wood pickets shaped to a 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. Together, these details draw on influences beyond Toronto while remaining grounded in the character of the city’s traditional residential fabric.