Atelier Kastelic Buffey: Understated design with big impact
Maison Glissade, by Atelier Kastelic Buffey. The Ontario Association of Architects named AKB the province’s top emerging architectural practice for 2014. Partners Robert Kastelic, 43, and Kelly Buffey, 42, have a slender portfolio weighted toward residential projects outside the city. The office’s house style is deliberately underwhelming.Shai Gil
Alpine Chalet, by Atelier Kastelic Buffey. A typical AKB dwelling is restrained and unsensational, strongly grounded in its surroundings, whether a dense urban neighbourhood or rolling Ontario farmland. Especially if this typical structure is in the country, it graciously tips its formal hat to such old building forms as the chalet and the barn.Shai Gil
Inside the Alpine Chalet. Mr. Kastelic came to architecture from a tradition of theatrical set-making that holds the set to be always background, never the commanding object of audience attention; and Ms. Buffey arrived from a career in interior design. The legacies of these previous lives show up in everything AKB does – in the retiring “background” character of its exteriors, for example, and in the details and drama of its interiors.Shai Gil
Notan House, by Atelier Kastelic Buffey. 'Architectural haiku,' Mr. Kastelic said. 'That’s what we want our work to be like.'James Brittain
Stone House, by Atelier Kastelic Buffey. ‘What edged us out over the great contemporaries and peers who are working alongside us is that our work feels good,’ says Ms. Buffey. ‘People like being in the spaces we create. We’re tapping into that emotional response from people.’James Brittain
‘I believe architecture comes from intuition, which you have to trust,’ says Ms. Buffey. ‘You are drawing on your history and on the spaces and streetscapes you’ve been to before, coming out of what you’ve gathered up to this point in your life.’Shai Gil
Stone House, by Atelier Kastelic Buffey. 'Our work is not form-based. When I look at what some friends are doing, I think they are lifting images, there’s no soul in the work. It’s lacking character and any real presence … even if it’s visually stimulating.'James Brittain