When my wife and I decided to carve an apartment out of an old factory building on Toronto's west side — this was some 20 years ago — we chose to keep the look of our place aligned to the industrial-strength aesthetics of the original building.
This was surely the simplest and cheapest thing to do, but efficiency wasn't the whole story. We liked the uncluttered interior space, so we vowed to keep it as open as possible. We liked the right angles, the high, flat ceilings, and the exposed steel beams that held them up — the whole kit and caboodle of vernacular modernism inherent in the factory on the day, just shy of a hundred years ago, when it opened for business.
But fidelity to strict, simple modernist geometry isn't the only way to go when reclaiming living space from industrial buildings. For those so inclined, the very openness of old warehouses and such — the common absence of load-bearing walls, for instance — can invite novel interventions and theatrical plays of spatial imagination.
Two people who are so inclined — artist and graphic designer Roman Milo and his wife, Zuzana Badovinac — happen to be neighbours of mine in this condominium building. Their stance toward the emptiness of the factory structure was utterly different from my own.
Working alongside designer and photographer Will Santillo, Mr. Milo has inserted a kind of vivid architectural puzzle into his small three-storey space.
The result — a complex, expressive dance of volumes and shifting perspectives cobbled from the common materials of studs and drywall — is one of the most sheerly interesting makeovers of industrial space I've ever seen in Toronto.
The drama of the flat begins just inside the front door, as the visitor steps down from the entry level, tiled in Indian slate, into the spare, concrete-floored living room. But instead of lingering there, the eye is immediately drawn by slanting walls and other cues to the rear, up a short flight of steps to the dining area, and, beyond that, up another series of steps to the kitchen.
The effect of this pull on visual attention is like that of a theatre, where all sightlines are focused on the stage — or, in this case, the places of eating and cooking, activities vividly celebrated in this first-storey design. But on this stage, the two places are sharply differentiated. The dining area is compact, lit by a sparkling, old-fashioned chandelier attached to a low ceiling. The atmosphere here is intimate, plain, open-handed.
The kitchen perched above it, on the other hand, is faintly mysterious. A light-chute rises 35 feet from the countertops to a skylight at the top of the building, showering down soft, high illumination by day that makes the kitchen seem like a tiny laneway in one of those tight old Italian cities where tall buildings, almost touching, pinch the streets. This impression, of the kitchen as an exterior place in a tight-knit city, is heightened by windows that open into the light-chute from rooms above.
The stairway to the upper levels twists up from the kitchen alongside the light-chute. In this ascent, as elsewhere in the scheme, Mr. Milo and Mr. Santillo have placed little surprises along the way — an unexpected overlook here, a daring angle there — thereby livening up what would be a dull transition in a less imaginative project.
Nor is architectural dullness permitted in Mr. Milo's workroom and the couple's media room, on the second level: These spaces have been rotated out of sync with the walls of the flat, giving the rooms unexpected spring and vivacity, and a sense of weightlessness — as though the volumes had floated to earth and settled askance each other.
The couple's bedroom suite, with its beautiful bathroom, 14-foot ceiling and walkout terrace, occupies the top floor of the composition. Here, the strong visual pulsing so evident on the stairs and in the rooms below is quieted a bit — though, once again, the skewing of walls and the joining of odd angles produces a moment of good, effective theatre. It's an appropriately romantic setting for the couple's bed, a floridly carved extravaganza from the Philippines.
I admire everything about the scheme Mr. Milo and Mr. Santillo have devised and realized here: its delightful wit and playful avant-gardism, its refinement in concept and execution.
What makes this project work, however, is the pleasure so evident throughout. The designers have created a house for people who love to cook and eat, entertain and relax; not an ascetic retreat.
If I still prefer the restrained Industrial Age aesthetic I've tried to preserve in my own apartment, I'm glad to know that, right next door, someone has discovered another, very joyful way to inhabit factory space in the big city.
