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When it comes to building homes, Bing Thom can afford to be picky. Best known locally for his work on the University of British Columbia's Chan Centre for the Performing Arts and Richmond's Aberdeen Centre, Thom's residential designs have become something of a coveted commodity among Vancouver homeowners.

Mr. Thom has designed only a handful of Vancouver homes since starting his firm, Bing Thom Architects, in 1980, many of which have garnered acclaim -- and none of which he has taken on without careful consideration. The firm's most recent residential project, referred to simply as "L1," was no exception.

"We actually interviewed the client as much as they interviewed us," says Mr. Thom from the comfortable elegance of his Vancouver office, a space befitting the visionary's polo shirt-clad figure and easy smile. "We don't build homes for money, we do it for love. So unless we and the client have common values, we're not interested in the project."

What ultimately convinced Mr. Thom to partner with the L1 owners (a couple recently immigrated from China) was the respectfulness of their approach.

"The husband basically said: 'Look, I have two children, so we need three bedrooms -- the rest is up to you,' " Mr. Thom shrugs in recollection.

"We were inspired by the tremendous trust they placed in us."

The "us" in this equation amounted to a team led by Mr. Thom himself and project architect Dan Du. The creative process was ultimately motivated by the team's desire to make a highly personalized space.

"We didn't want to build a pseudo-Chinese home," Mr. Thom explains.

"But obviously we wanted to make it comfortable for this family with a Chinese background."

From that aim came a design philosophy as unique to the North American architectural milieu as it is unusual: that of moving from the outside in, and planning the garden first.

"Many Chinese homes are treated as pavilions in a garden," explains Mr. Thom, evoking an internal space that encourages, rather than inhibits, interaction with the external environment. The challenge posed by the L1 site was its placement in a typical, flat suburban area with little to speak of in the way of views.

"The neighbourhood has very few natural aspects that we could use as a catalyst to design the home," Mr. Du says.

"That's why the garden concept was so important -- it acted like an anchor for us."

Mr. Thom and Mr. Du chose a Suzhou (pronounced "Su-jo") garden landscape to fill the long, rectangular site.

With a name derived from the Chinese city of its origin, a Suzhou garden is known for the delicacy, simplicity, and intimacy of their settings. In keeping with the Suzhou's characteristic use of water, a large pond was excavated on the site, enhancing the serenity of the landscape.

Rather than rely on the detached omniscience of a plan, Mr. Thom and Mr. Du designed the garden through a series of sketches and paintings representing views they imagined as existing from inside the future home.

"We literally picked every tree," Mr. Thom says. "We put ourselves into a room, looking out a window, and decided what we wanted to see from that window -- then we went to find the particular tree to fit that view."

Every detail, from the size and texture of leaves in relation to their neighbours to the affinity between the colours of the garden and the colours of the home, was considered. And considered again.

"We render our sketches to reflect seasonal changes in order to help the client understand how the garden works," explains Mr. Du, unrolling a collection of scarlet, green and gold splashes framed in the scrawled outlines of windows.

Integrating neighbouring treescapes through a skillful use of layering, angles and height (a process known as "borrowing landscape"), Mr. Thom and Mr. Du planned an escalation of plant life that would appear to spill up and over the garden wall -- so much so that the wall itself (and the world beyond) would become obsolete, lost in a sense of infinite depth.

"On the other hand," Mr. Thom says, "we wanted to create a sense of privacy with the garden. So the obvious thing was to position the front door in such a way that discovering the garden would be a surprise, rather than something obvious." Discretely tucked along the property's western border, the entrance to the home is accessible only by a narrow, alley-like walkway of slate paving stones.

"This is where the contraction of the home begins," says Mr. Du on a visit to the site, gesturing along the walk and the caressing arbor of trees above.

Even past the front gate, the garden remains a mystery, screened from view by a fence-like partition. Some protruding greenery and the distant tinkle of running water are the only hints that there is more to this space than initially meets the eye. Only once you have passed through the home's impressive front door and around yet another screen of aquamarine sculpted glass are the first views of the garden truly revealed.

No Wizard of Oz anti-climax here, Dorothy. Floor-to-ceiling windows form the eastern and southern walls of the formal living and dining room, exposing a veritable wilderness of leaves, petals and water in the yard beyond. Obstructions to the view, kept to a bare minimum, still find a way to reincorporate the natural environment. A gas fireplace encased in a concrete column, for example, is cleverly constructed with a back wall of glass, providing one of many distinctive frames through which the pond and garden can be enjoyed.

The glass walling to the east extends through the kitchen and family room, allowing for movement along almost the entirety of the main floor without views being compromised -- or replicated.

Full-length portions of the glass become moveable panels, sliding open to further dissolve the divide between home and yard. Together with the sheer drop of the exterior façade and the home's two-foot proximity to the pond's surface, the wide open "windows" create the surreal sensation of the home actually floating on water.

The eye flows from flawless maple flooring into the shimmering ripples of the pond, up the gentle spill of a three-tiered waterfall, climbing over the rolling contours of moss banks and, finally, up the sweeping branches of Japanese maples and the graduated reach of several pines (the furthermost of which is actually located across the street) to the blueness of open sky. The garden wall and six-foot cedar shrubs guarding the home from street level are swallowed in a seamless stretch of serenity.

The blending between outside and inside space extends to the bedrooms of the second floor, where sliding glass walls open onto moss-covered decks. Visibility from the street is mediated by an external layer of shoji-like wood screens, which can be moved to suit the privacy and shading needs of those inside while still maintaining garden views.

It is from the upper level that the roof, perhaps the home's second most unique design feature, is best taken in. Inspired by the form of a thinning bar of soap, the roof's "stressed skin" design is composed of two layers of joined plywood whose tapered edges have been sculpted upward in a lilting manner.

"The lift is essential to convey the idea of lightness," says Mr. Thom of the incredibly painstaking procedure. "If the curve only existed on one side," he illustrates with a sketch of a dome roof joined to a flat bottom, "the heaviness would remain."

"But when you put the 'smile' on the home," he continues, inflating the lower-half of his sketch, "it floats." Separated from the concrete home by a glass storey, the roof appears to hover over the rooms below. The grey patina of zinc cladding on both the soffit and interior adds a soft finish to this crowning component of the home's lyrical flow.

"The building is an expression of something that has grown from the earth, and the roof is an expression of something that comes from the sky," Mr. Thom explains. "It's the old Chinese poetic of heaven and earth, with man and woman in between."

As the woman "in-between," L1 owner Claudia couldn't look more at home in this sanctuary. Over a fragrant cup of green tea and a ripe bowl of cherries, she admits to having found heaven on earth.

"This is my dream," she says, sweeping her hand along the panorama framed by the kitchen windows. "Blue sky, clouds, water, nature." As if on cue, a dragonfly sweeps its way into the room and begins a futile attempt to land on a crowd of horsetails standing against the other side of the glass wall. Even nature remains unsure of where its domain ends and begins in this space.

Claudia rises to help her winged friend on his way, before continuing: "Here I have the time and space to let myself think, create peace, keep my life simple."

But surely there must be some flaw in this portrait of paradise. The day outside is seductively golden and warm, but what about when the rains return? Claudia gestures again toward the glass to the tranquillity of the pond, and with that single motion makes clear that not even the flood of a Vancouver winter could drown the magic of this place she calls home.

The realization brings an earlier comment of Mr. Thom's to mind: "Every morning, every season, the garden is speaking to Claudia differently. She finds meaning in the house that way. It's a book you will read 10 or 12 times and still find out more about -- good architecture is like that."