Skip to main content
Open this photo in gallery:

Echo House, recently completed on a 2-acre Bridle Path lot by Toronto artist and architect Paul Raff. The sense of the old façade – long, low-slung – has been retained, but Mr. Raff has lightened its formerly ponderous visage by cladding the exterior with silvery Algonquin limestone and stacking clerestory windows on top of it.Ben Rahn

1 of 14
Open this photo in gallery:

Landscape architect Janet Rosenberg designed and planted the grounds in the early 1990s. Mr. Raff’s renovation sought, among other things, to connect the house more closely to its verdant surroundings. In the original house, views over the rear garden were largely blocked by opaque walls.Ben Rahn

2 of 14
Open this photo in gallery:

The back deck. Mr. Raff’s strategy of renewal has involved radically opening up the house to light and air, and freshening the formerly dour 142-foot front façade. The result is a spacious garden pavilion beautifully tailored for an active family.Ben Rahn

3 of 14
Open this photo in gallery:

Privacy screen detail.Steve Tsai

4 of 14
Open this photo in gallery:

In good weather, the owners can welcome the outdoors in by rolling away the glass walls of the austere Bulthaup kitchen and the sitting room, which give onto the garden at the rear.Ben Rahn / A-Frame

5 of 14
Open this photo in gallery:

The dining room. It and the home’s other communal rooms are separated from the outside only by large panes of transparent glass (almost eight feet by eight feet square) that slide aside to create an aperture 32 feet wide.Ben Rahn

6 of 14
Open this photo in gallery:

Even when the walls are pulled to and shut, nature is still present to sight, because the views out the back of the house are so, inclusive.Ben Rahn

7 of 14
Open this photo in gallery:

The master ensuite.Ben Rahn

8 of 14
Open this photo in gallery:

The kids’ bedroom.Ben Rahn

9 of 14
Open this photo in gallery:

Echo House, pool.Ben Rahn

10 of 14
Open this photo in gallery:

Nature is never far from sight, as views out the back of the house are so comprehending.Steve Tsai

11 of 14
Open this photo in gallery:

Staircase screen.Steve Tsai

12 of 14
Open this photo in gallery:

Workspace. The frostily white walls interior heighten the effect of luxurious hardwood flooring.Ben Rahn / A-Frame

13 of 14
Open this photo in gallery:

Mr. Raff filled in the cave-like openings in the façade with interesting privacy screens made from reclaimed Douglas fir and held together by blackened steel clips. This attractive combination of warm timber and metal joinery – inspired, the architect told me, by fine Korean woodcraft – appears elsewhere to accent the predominantly black and white character of the scheme.Ben Rahn

14 of 14

Interact with The Globe