Forest, ocean, craggy slopes – these are widely considered the key influences on architect Ron Thom’s West Coast residences. To those natural factors we may add several human factors: boats, art and Frank Lloyd Wright. All of these influences synthesize brilliantly in Mr. Thom’s 1965 Case Residence, which realtor Paul Browne is now bringing to the market in West Vancouver.
Ron Thom designed the house on a rocky outcrop overlooking the water for Dennis and Adele Case. Though later in life he became famous for designing Massey College in Toronto and Trent University in Peterborough, the renowned architect grew up as a proverbial West Coaster, spending his summers on the Gulf Islands.
Before he began his career in architecture, Mr. Thom had first set out to be an artist, studying at the Vancouver School of Art under Jack Shadbolt and B.C. Binning. The mentorship of these well-known artists gifted him with an artist’s eye. Instead of a rationalist rectilinearity, he enriched the Case House with oblique lines and diagonals, a trademark of his mentors’approaches to composition.
For the Cases, the nautical connection was powerful: Dennis was a naval architect by profession, and the couple were avid sailors with an oceanview lot not far from a marina. Ron Thom respected Dennis Case in a uniquely collegial way, in large part because of Mr. Case’s own design prowess, recalls his longtime friend and next-door neighbour, Anne Ferries. Mr. Case designed boats and ships – the emblems of the West Coast landscape from which Mr. Thom drew inspiration.
Ms. Ferries, who is co-executor of the Case estate, has their notebooks and photo albums, packed with photographs of the sailboats he created himself, alongside drawings and photos of the house at all stages of construction. Dennis and Adele Case both collaborated on the creation of the house, clearing the lot, roughing out floor plans and then doing much of the construction work themselves. Their hand-written diary of the process reveals an uncommon level of client participation, with Mr. Thom swooping in on occasion to consult on and refine the project as it took shape.
Dennis Case died in June, nine years after Adele’s passing. The binders and shoeboxes full of notes and drawings are a testament to their love of the ocean, the land, the boats and the house. On the West Coast, notes architect and former Thom associate Barry Downs, “there’s always been a love affair of buildings and forms relating to the sea.”
Adele Case on the balcony, c. 1966.
Dennis Case (left) discusses house plan and ongoing construction with Ron Thom (right) and friend and neighbour Bob Dawson, who helped with construction.
Another neighbour, Bob Dawson, who had also built his own Ron Thom-designed house, was among those who helped with the construction on weekends. “It was pretty challenging,” Mr. Dawson recalls in a telephone interview. “The house was built on solid rock, and you had to fit the foundation to the contours of the lot.” Mr. Thom’s plan conceived the house as a series of overlapping diamond shapes comprised of 30-degree and 60-degree angles, hugging the site in a dramatic fashion.
Inside the Case House, the angles of the ceiling evoke the swells of an ocean as they plunge down and then up. Douglas firs that line the walkway to the front door can be seen as a kind of homage to boating oars.
The front entrance is a trapezoid, its head sloping sharply downward to follow the angle of the hip roof. Inside, step right and behold another trapezoid: a gothic-like slot window whose head jamb also angles downward in line with the sloped ceiling. It makes architectural sense, even as it evokes the forms of a B.C. Binning drawing or a Jack Shadbolt canvas.
