Reality for most homeowners is a never ending list of to-dos: repair the garage, replace the tap, refinish the floors, repaint the baseboards. It's a galaxy away from those shiny magazine and TV images of immaculate designer homes with no clutter and no peeling paint, just the artful placement of fashionable furnishings. Ever wonder what it's like to live that way?
Well, wonder no more.
For $595 (plus GST) a night, you can experience what it feels like to live in a fabulous, ultra-modern, award-winning home. You too can rent the Morris House, which overlooks the Avon River in the heart of Stratford.
James Morris, its owner and its resident for half of the year, is the visionary co-founder of the Stratford Chefs School, as well as the owner of Rundles, one of the finest restaurants in the country which just happens to be next door.
Completed in 2001 after two years in the planning and building process, the house is custom everything and ended up costing Mr. Morris about $600,000. "Everything was done with purpose and painstaking detail," he says. "We had a blueprint for just about everything. There isn't a single thing in the house that isn't custom. It was often a challenge getting someone to do the work because of it."
The two-bedroom, three-storey house, which is divided into six levels, stands on a small piece of land, just 16 feet wide and 45 feet long. The building is made of iron and concrete; trimmed in B.C. cedar on the outside and Douglas fir on the inside. The mostly large, strategically placed windows, skylights and central atrium bathe the interior in natural light. Although the house is only 1,800 square feet, it feels much, much bigger. Most of the rooms are relatively small, yet the overall impression is one of enormous space. This is a house of volume and the effect is truly liberating.
Award-winning Shim-Sutcliffe Architects, of Toronto, designed the building and worked closely with Mr. Morris throughout the process. The innovative and highly acclaimed husband and wife team of Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe have more Governor General's Medals in Architecture than they do employees. The Morris House -- or Tower House as they call it -- was chosen by magazine Architectural Record as one of the top eight designs for 2002.
"My input was more about the requirements of the house than its design," Mr. Morris says, "but I do know what I like." Mr. Morris was inspired to contact Shim-Sutcliffe after he saw a garden pavilion the couple designed for Toronto developer Murray Frum, who is also a Rundles patron.
One of the most interesting elements of the Shim-Sutcliffe design is a 20-foot high, poured concrete wall that runs the length of the house. On one side is the house, the other side the restaurant. The wall is the physical, as well as the psychological demarcation between public and private space and for Mr. Morris, "an element that is really pivotal to the whole project."
In fact, the wall is entirely about concept and design since structurally it supports nothing.
"I'm very happy with the way the project turned out," says Mr. Morris, whose great taste in contemporary furnishings complements the modernistic design of the house.
"It's so clean, quiet and inspiring. It's almost Zen-like."
Perhaps that's why, despite the absence of advertising, the house "has developed a following," as Mr. Morris puts it. "Most people who stay here come via word of mouth, largely through the restaurant."
