Architect Bruce Haden, right, on the front balcony at Koo's Garage
Back in 2001, a few boom cycles ago, Vancouver architect Bruce Haden embarked on a housing project that was both professionally strategic and intensely personal. On the threshold of joining the partnership of acclaimed firm Hotson Bakker, he wanted to design a home for himself that would be close to his workplace and imbued with the spirit of urbanism on which his new partners had built their reputations. Almost a decade later, this compact townhouse continues to inspire its owner-designer. “It would take a lot for me to leave,” Mr. Haden says. “Four kids, maybe. Or a spectacular job offer in Copenhagen.”
Mr. Haden chose Strathcona as his neighbourhood and a dilapidated commercial parking garage as his base material. Orchestrating a six-unit deal with Robert Brown of Chesterman Property Group, they transformed the garage into a block of compact, urbane lofts and townhouses and made the corner unit Mr. Haden's own. The resulting 850-square-foot townhouse is now a local fixture.
It's still known as Koo's long after the garage's conversion, even as the neighbourhood transforms around him. Last year's market yielded the first Strathcona house to sell for more than $1-million, Mr. Haden notes, and his own unit's market value has more than doubled to roughly $700,000 today. Yet even as the proverbial movers, shakers and young families lope in, the neighbourhood is still with dotted with teardowns, drug dens and the occasional brothel, which to some observers just add to the area's Runyonesque charm. “It's not completely yuppified,” Mr. Haden says. “I moved [to Strathcona] because I thought it was interesting and quirky and fun. … The feeling I get now is that it's even more interesting and more quirky and more fun.”
Mr. Haden is renowned as a social architect, in all senses of the word. He loves designing community projects such as the Okanagan's Nk'Mip Desert Cultural Centre – and he loves parties. Every November, Koo's Corner serves as a base camp for friends and colleagues partaking in the annual Eastside Culture Crawl of gallery open houses. (The translucent glass door panels of the garage also serves as public street cinema, projecting vintage film loops during crawl nights and other soirées.) Mr. Haden's home is his social experiment and his calling card.
The floors, cupboards and dining-room tabletop are crafted with reclaimed wood. The compact living room segues into a dining-room zone that could be dubbed Gothic modern, with its double-height ceiling and 13-foot-tall south-facing window. Off the dining room, a staircase turns down to the guest quarters and garage-cum-party room and up to the main sleeping quarters. At arm's length from the table is the semi-open kitchen, a cube-like niche accented with deep-red ceramic tiling.
With minimal floor space, the furniture has to multitask. Mr. Haden custom-designed his dining-room table, a two-piece Corian tabletop with four double-column legs that can be reconfigured to seat up to 12 people. During casual gatherings, the architecture itself becomes the furniture: the generously deep Gothic modern window ledge, a banquette; the snug staircase off the dining room, a side chair. And, most unusual multitasker of all: the birch-framed queen-size master bed that conceals a bathtub within.
