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When you renovate a house in Toronto's more established neighbourhoods, the polite thing to do is to hide all the new construction and leave the front facade intact. In fact, that's often a city requirement.

But a Cedarvale house that architect Drew Mandel completed last year takes this impulse one step further: Though Mr. Mandel designed it from the ground up, he put a familiar face on a decidedly 21st-century dwelling.

Well, at least halfway familiar. The front of the three-storey, four-bedroom home features a gabled roof and plenty of warm wood; but the unusual proportions, the huge ground-floor window and a wing that hangs out over the driveway make subtle contemporary statements.

That neighbourly balance is exactly what the owners, Allan Kanee and Thea Weisdorf, both medical doctors, were looking for as they built the house just steps from their previous home.

"I always let my clients set the tone of the project," Mr. Mandel says. "And, as long-time residents of the street, Allan and Thea didn't want to rock what they thought was a great street. They wanted to clearly build a contemporary house, and get it right, and open it up to the back — but they didn't want an architectural showstopper."

From the minute you step inside, however, it's clear that they got one anyway. A cozy living room fills the front of the house, but the building explodes outward at the back — stepping down one level to meet the wooded ravine beyond, and soaring upward two more levels in a complex composition of wood, glass, stone and exposed steel I-beams.

The kitchen and family room are at ground level, a dining room hangs between the kitchen and the upper floors.

Upstairs, visible through an atrium with glass walls and rails, are bedrooms, an office and an exercise room. All of the rooms along the back of the house, including the master suite, are lined with windows for panoramic forest views.

Dr. Kanee and Dr. Weisdorf sound surprisingly modest about their ideas for the building, which replaced a seventies back-split with small back windows and a huge deck that ignored the ravine's slope.

"The two things we decided early on," Dr. Kanee says, "were that we wanted something modern — and that was certainly the rationale behind working with Drew — and I had it quite strongly in my mind that I wanted to walk out at the main floor."

The couple, who have two daughters and typically hectic doctors' schedules, also wanted to showcase their art collection, but most important, they wanted a sense of home.

"Within a modern design," adds Dr. Weisdorf, "I wanted to make sure that it was a very homey feeling for our kids and that it was still going to feel very warm — a good place to have people over, and just a very comfortable place to live."

For many people, those qualities aren't compatible with the language of contemporary architecture. So to see if their vision matched his, Mr. Mandel showed them his own home: an 11.5-foot-wide house squeezed between Victorian residences off Avenue Road. He designed it while working for the inventive local firm MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects, and since he started his own practice almost five years ago, it's become his calling card.

In this case, it cinched the deal. "It gave us the confidence to trust his vision," Dr. Kanee says. "I practice on myself," the architect says. "Which is more than we can say for what we do," Dr. Weisdorf says dryly.

Obviously, the architect and clients hit it off, and like any good relationship theirs was full of good communication and also surprises. "I remember thinking they weren't hardcore modernists, and so we were having a conversation on the tone we wanted to set for the house," Mr. Mandel recalls. "And I remember Thea saying, 'We like that exposed steel.' "

Then there was the time that they agreed to include a wall of exposed concrete block — another not-so-domestic material.

Mr. Mandel was thrilled with their adventurousness. A steel structure let him get highly creative with the house's space — even hanging the third floor out over the ravine. (With steel beams for a base, he explains, "you can cast the thing into the forest.") The result is a house with visual connections across its four levels, and a skillful, surprising weave of materials and textures.

To balance the muscular steel, many of those are luxurious natural materials. The hardwood floors are a rich wenge, the downstairs ceilings are lined with jatoba hardwood, and stone — specifically Algonquin ledgerock from Owen Sound — is everywhere, from the sink in the powder room to the fireplace.

The windows, by Radiant City Millwork, are framed with solid mahogany.

"I think those things warm it up," Mr. Mandel argues. "It feels like big, nice old furniture."

And plenty of details help make it more comfortable. The girls have their own bathroom upstairs, where the counters are set slightly low for their comfort.

None of the bedrooms are large, but even the kids' rooms get spectacular views from corner windows at the front. And one has a small nook under the gable of the roof. Mr. Mandel admits it would have been more elegant to close it in, but leaving it open is very kid-friendly.

That decision, like the house as a whole, reflects the spirit of the people who live here. Dr. Kanee and Dr. Weisdorf talk unpretentiously about their home's flow and comfort, which it definitely has. But it's also a real work of architecture. Even if it's a bit modest about it.