This sort of move – a bold reconfiguring of interior spaces – is much more common in New York, where people of means often live in multiunit buildings. Messrs. Campbell and Thompson could have bought a house, but they selected a loft, a short walk from their offices, and theychose to customize it to the last degree. For one thing the home office, fitted with custom bookcases, desks and drawer units, is dead centre. “We wanted it to be central because that’s where we spend a lot of our time,” Mr. Thompson says. “The home office is like the new kitchen.”
Likewise, the couple embraced openness. The vessel neatly contains the separate rooms they need while letting light and a sense of spaciousness into every corner. (Mr. Campbell, in particular, insisted on leaving some room on top of the vessel for sunlight to sneak in.) “We really wanted to use the entire space,” Mr. Thompson explains. “Growing up in traditional households, we both had rooms that were never used.”
This can be confusing to family members, who wonder why they’ve taken nearly all the walls down. Mr. Thompson: “My mom said, ‘There’s only one bedroom!’” Mr. Campbell counters: “My mom said, ‘There’s no bedroom!’” (For the record, they put up house guests in a nearby hotel.)
But it’s in the details that this place distinguishes itself. Near the front doorway, the walls turn around two sharp corners – in each case, two planes smooth themselves into rounded bullnose corners and brush together, millimetres apart. This quality of workmanship is rare in Toronto, but it’s consistently achieved here by woodworker Kang Lee of KGA – who, conveniently, was a boat-builder in his native Vietnam – and builder Derek Nicholson.
Mr. Chong also gives Mr. Thompson and Mr. Campbell much of the credit. “Every architect would love to have clients like these guys,” Mr. Chong says. “Not just the wherewithal, but also the belief in the ideas: They want to make it all fit into an entire experience.”
This month, Mr. Chong was putting the finishing touches on the space by completing custom furniture with the same white oak – rift-cut, for a smooth grain – and the same details. In the bedroom, an arc-shaped chaise longue fits into a small lounge area in the corner. Its back curves in three dimensions, leaning inward as it arcs around. The closer you look, the more complex it reveals itself to be. “This is a pain, but it’s exactly our vision,” Mr. Thompson says. The bed, also, has the same rounded “bullnose” details as those walls of the vessel. These are expressions on the smallest scale of Mr. Chong’s architectural language, joining modernist ideas about openness and expressive form with natural materials, traditional craftsmanship, and a sense of how 21st-century city people – or at least a couple of them – really live.
“A professor of mine once told me, make your home a tool for living better,” Mr. Chong says. “And that’s what this aspires to be.”
