Modernist houses — with their sleek horizontal profiles, glass walls and open plans — were among the loveliest accomplishments of 20th-century architectural design. But they always had one shortcoming. They were typically fashioned with a single person or couple in mind, or, at most, a small family — the kind of sophisticated people who appreciated life in a glass box. There wasn't a place in such homes for anything old — not a grandfather clock, nor even a grandfather.
But times are changing. People live longer nowadays than they used to, and some older couples want to live out their lives in the company of offspring and descendants. It may be only a matter of time before numerous architects are challenged by intelligent clients to bring forth contemporary multigenerational houses that are comfortable without being throwbacks to the ancien régime or faux-whatever monster houses.
It's a happy prospect: large families eating at a common table, old folks freed from the loneliness of the condominium, young folks introduced early to the patience and charity necessary in day-to-day life with older relatives — all of it in buildings that embody the best architectural thinking in the age of the Internet.
In a residential project recently completed in the Lawrence and Avenue Road district of north Toronto, designer Cindy Rendely has come up with a noteworthy solution to the problem I'm talking about.
When they approached her about three years ago, Ms. Rendely's clients wanted a home that would conveniently shelter their sizable household. This number included the couple and their three sons, the elderly parents of the man of the house, and a domestic staff of two or three people. Everyone in this ensemble would need both privacy and opportunities for encounter — a place to call his or her own, but also a sense of belonging to a larger whole.
But a sprawling palazzo fit neither the clients' taste nor their budget. They wanted a distinctively modern house, with the things modernist architecture is good at giving: loads of sunshine flooding the house through floor-to-ceiling glass walls, clean sweeps of interior space, wide but intimate views of nearby nature. (The two adjacent lots the clients had acquired featured a pleasant ravine.)
Ms. Rendely's reply to her clients' wishes is a 6,700-square-foot house that turns a somewhat glum face of brick and dark-painted aluminum to the street, but that opens up beautifully within. Upon entering the spacious, bright vestibule of the building, the visitor finds the wing devoted to the grandparents flowing off to the right. There, one finds everything an older couple might need for comfortable living: a small living/dining room with a fireplace and good views of the ravine, and a bedroom and bathroom thoughtfully designed to allow for easy wheelchair access.
To the left of the vestibule is the principal living and dining area, and the entrance to the house proper. Embraced by these two large structural divisions is a broad terrace for summer entertaining and relaxing, joined to the ravine below and beyond by a wide flight of steps.
The ravine landscape is acknowledged everywhere in this house, by the orientation of its large windows and by very deliberate sightlines drawing the eye outside and into the forest that gathers beside the stream running through the property. In addition to creating a tight poetic fit between her house and nature, Ms. Rendely has also made a classical interior landscape for the residents: Each space opens into the next with sequencing that is logical and orderly, but never humdrum, and the calm rhythm of walls and tall windows produces a fine alternation of shadow and light throughout the interior.
Ms. Rendely's taste in interior finishes, like her refined sense of space, is old-school modernist: She prefers a restricted palette of materials and colours to a more varied one. While the Eramosa limestone used throughout the house is a versatile material — polished, it resembles richly veined marble; stacked up in rough-cut slabs, it reminds one of the dramatic ledges that jut out into Georgian Bay — it is just as taupe as the bricks and the oak flooring. The overall visual effect generated by these materials is monotonous. At the urging of the owners, Ms. Rendely allowed a couple of walls to be painted green and blue — a good move, but one that doesn't go far enough.
Of course, the very muted colour scheme can always be brightened by furnishings and art. What can't be changed about this house — its spatial arrangements, its imaginative discipline and order — certainly needs no improvement or alteration. It's a house for all seasons, and for the people of various ages who will be calling it home.
