The Globe and Mail

It was the late 1960s when Eberhard Zeidler first scrambled down the side of the Rosedale ravine and looked back up at a prodigious challenge.

The pitch seemed inhospitable and the difficulty of building formidable, but the architect was immediately captivated by the potential for creating a signature house in the sylvan setting.

The slope was 27 degrees – the same measure, Mr. Zeidler learned, as the main street of San Francisco. “I thought if they could do it …”

The unusual site on the south side of Beaumont Road became the setting for a modernist family residence that cascades down the hill and – far below street level – seems encompassed by wilderness.

Forty years later, Mr. Zeidler takes evident pleasure in his house and its surroundings. He is especially ardent when he talks about how the house has served, sheltered and nurtured the people for whom it was designed – his wife, Jane Zeidler, and their four children.

Many know Eb Zeidler for his landmark public buildings: He was the guiding force behind the Eaton Centre in Toronto, the Ontario Science Centre and Ontario Place. In Vancouver, he oversaw Canada Place and, in Hamilton, McMaster Health Sciences Centre.Zeidler Partnership Architects now has offices in London, Berlin, Beijing, Shanghai and Abu Dhabi. Mr. Zeidler has travelled the globe designing buildings for the needs of patrons but architects often have trouble designing for themselves. I wondered how demanding he found the client at 11 Beaumont Rd.

“That was Jane,” he says.

Ms. Zeidler demurs, saying she left all of the planning to him, with the exception of her requests for a second-floor laundry room and a smooth drive down the slope.

She adds that the ravine setting in the centre of Toronto is the ideal compromise for their duelling preferences.

“Eb loves the country and I love the city.”

Mr. Zeidler has designed 20 or so private residences over the course of a career that began with his studies at the Bauhaus Weimar in Germany. He immigrated to Canada in 1951.

At the Bauhaus, he adhered to the strict tenets of the modern movement. But over the years, he says, he came to appreciate elements of tradition.

“I felt that architecture wasn't just the future, it's also the past.”

The house he designed has the garage at the top of the four levels, then continues its descent into the ravine until the modern construction meets the stone walls of the original.

Those walls, he explains, had been built of limestone salvaged from the remains of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa after the Centre Block was destroyed by fire in 1916. The stone walls are all that's left of a rundown multiunit building that once stood on the site.

In keeping with Ms. Zeidler's request, the architect built a long, heated driveway so they can drive right into the garage in all weather.

On a recent tour of the house, Mr. Zeidler pointed out how children can veer off in one direction and the adults another. The kitchen and family room stand together at the rear with doors leading to a stone-walled terrace and salt water pool. That's where the kids tend to congregate.

Adults are drawn to the glass walls of the dining room and living room with their dramatic views of the forest.

The house must be functional, certainly, but architecture must also cater to human needs and create an emotional connection, Mr. Zeidler says.

“It's function but it's also emotion.”

To that end, enclosed areas offer cozy places to sit, while the soaring space and central stairs that connect the levels create an energy that flows through the house, Mr. Zeidler says.