News

The house of well-known Toronto artist and art dealer Charles Pachter is a stone's throw from the spectacularly reworked Art Gallery of Ontario. Frank Gehry's AGO, basking in critical acclaim, makes an impressive neighbour.

But Mr. Pachter's home has its own — albeit more modest — success story, and has garnered design kudos of its own, namely the 2007 award of excellence from the Ontario Association of Architects.

Honours aside, it's clear when you hear the details of how his house was created that it was a labour of love.

It was designed by architect Stephen Teeple, and his associate, Bernard Jin, together with Mr. Pachter himself. Mr. Teeple — who won two Governor-General's awards in architecture this year — calls 22 Grange Ave. a "collaborative process."

It was a meeting of the minds when Mr. Teeple and Mr. Pachter sat down in 2002 over glasses of single-malt scotch in the property's backyard that the vision for Pachter Hall was born.

And although Mr. Teeple says his firm contributed the architectural ideas, he adds that the 65-year-old artist was invested in the design every step of the way, fine-tuning details to ensure the home would deliver a stunning experience.

"It kind of puts him on the map a little bit. For a single painter, it's an expressive little building," Mr. Teeple says. "It gives him some presence. He kind of saw it as his mini-baby AGO. The whole city shares in the AGO, but every little thing counts."

The house at 22 Grange in Toronto is a striking contrast to the rickety Victorian homes stuffed into Chinatown's narrow lots. It's modernist right down to its sans-serif grey "twenty-two" street address. The structure consists of three stacked segments, the middle one set farther back so the top careens dramatically forward. The glass and steel panelling at the front and back of the house make for an inviting facade.

The 6,200-square-foot, three-storey expanse contains Moose Factory, Mr. Pachter's gallery, as well as his studio and loft-style living space.

The house had humbler beginnings, though. When Mr. Pachter first bought the property in 1996 for just $145,000, it was a ramshackle garage with a lot full of garbage and a warehouse at the back, curving behind a neighbour's house.

When he happened upon it, he says, the warehouse was about a century old, having once been a Jewish funeral home and, later, a Chinese wholesale food storage facility, complete with bags of rice and old food spilled everywhere.

Mr. Pachter was no stranger to architectural projects: For close to 30 years he's been renovating and selling homes mostly in the neighbourhood between Dundas and Queen streets. He doesn't like the term house-flipper, although he's renovated 24 dwellings, including this one, to date.

"It's not the same — I lived in them," he explains. "This art palace is the end result of 40 years of making art, having art shows and renovating old dumps."

After he bought this property, he fixed up the warehouse, tore down the garage, and, in 1998, opened Moose Factory to showcase his work, all the while living in a nearby house. But in 2002, he sold that house and committed himself to building his dream home in the driveway at 22 Grange.

"I said, 'I've got one chance to do this right,'" he says. But turning his visions of Pachter Hall into reality "cost twice what I thought it would."

The rear warehouse is still Mr. Pachter's gallery and studio space. It's joined to the house by a hallway, while an outdoor courtyard with a fountain in the centre is situated between the two. Inside, a glass elevator moves slowly up to the second and third floors. (The first two floors both provide a sitting and gallery space.) The third floor is Mr. Pachter's private loft overlooking the street, complete with bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and office.

A fire escape-style staircase leads to the flat roof, which offers a lounge chair and stunning views of the AGO, adjacent Ontario College of Art and Design, and a moose sculpture at the roof's edge.An iconic Canadian pop artist, Mr. Pachter is probably best known for his painting of the Queen on a moose, called Noblesse Oblige, and his mural Hockey Knights in Canada at the College subway station.

He's also a member of the Order of Canada, has shown his work in galleries worldwide, and likes nothing more than to entertain in his landmark home — provided he still gets some time to himself.

He lives alone and has never married. "I never had the patience or inclination to do it," he says. "The only marriage I'm comfortable with is between art and architecture."

From a set of 1950s bar stools he bought on eBay to an anthropomorphic couch from a suite in the Park Royal hotel in New York City, to 40 years worth of art on every inch of wall space, it's clear each element of the house has been lovingly considered and thought out.

He notes, however, that it was the site of the house that intrigued Mr. Teeple, and got him on board with the project.

"It's narrow, it's long, it's got no access to light. It's a very linear condition. Our response was to exaggerate it," Mr. Teeple says. "You've got these framed views to the street. We repeated that three times. By limiting the problem to those few expressive moments, it gives it a sense of drama. It gives it a sense of power and feeling and intensity."

The house's glass panels allow light to flood in from the ends, he explains. The home's frame is wood and the cladding is black zinc.

"It's fairly limited in its material palate, intentionally," Mr. Teeple says. "It's part of that reductive idea for exaggerating the condition of the site."

The architect adds that this stark difference is the reason the home interacts well the surrounding neighbourhood.

"To me it looks like a kind of modernistic interpretation of what may have been there before," he says. "It relies on contrast for its expression. But without the contrast, if it was a brick box, you'd go 'eh.' It wouldn't have any drama."

Special to The Globe and Mail