A studio by the sea

A self-described boy from the suburbs, Toronto-born, Halifax-based architect Omar Gandhi has ironically made his name with a series of striking rural residences that dot Nova Scotia’s coastal landscape.

These private homes – the most celebrated being the Rabbit Snare Gorge cabin on Cape Breton, which won him a 2018 Governor General’s Medal in Architecture – are distinguished by the way they both complement and comment on their rugged surroundings. Adopting Gandhi’s own description, a recent New York Times article likened them to the Wild Things in Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s picture book, Where the Wild Things Are.

But if their exteriors can look sleek and severe, the interiors often shine with an inviting inner warmth. The yellow gleam from their windows promises shelter from the storm.

Gandhi says his design is very much about that contrast. The hard shell is meant to be an extension of the land, appearing to be as time-weathered as the rocks and trees. Within its walls, however, there is “that warm glow as if from a fire, almost like a yoke inside the egg.”

Gandhi is speaking from his headquarters in Halifax, where Omar Gandhi Architect Inc. is about to celebrate its 10-year anniversary. In that decade, his small firm has expanded to a second office in Toronto and amassed an impressive portfolio of projects that have made the 40-year-old one of Canada’s most exciting architects.

Apart from his signature private homes, which include the aerodynamic, ocean-facing Lookout at Broad Cove Marsh and the Acadian haystack-inspired Sluice Point, he’s also created a sinuous string of villas for Cape Breton’s famed Cabot Links golf course. Nor does he work exclusively in the countryside – or Nova Scotia. Current urban projects include designing the Pier 8 landmark community on Hamilton’s waterfront.

It’s rural landscapes that he’s most drawn to, however. He traces that love back to his teenage years in Brampton, Ont., when he found himself commuting to Mayfield Secondary School, an arts high school in the nearby town of Caledon. “I’d grown up in the ’burbs with its rubber-stamped houses,” he recalls, “but the school was in the middle of the country, a half-hour drive through farmland, and looking at Southern Ontario agrarian architecture was really a turning point for me.”

After undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto, he enrolled at Dalhousie University in Halifax to take his architectural degree. “I knew nothing about Halifax, Nova Scotia or the Maritimes at the time,” he says. Although he started his career back in Toronto with architects KPMB and Young + Wright, he soon returned to Halifax to join MacKay Lyons Sweetapple before branching out on his own. Now he’s a devoted Maritimer.

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“This city and province are a wonderful place to think and be creative,” he says, pointing to the lack of urban clutter and proximity to nature. “It’s also a little bit dramatic, in the same way as the Scottish Highlands. There’s a real darkness to it, which is beautiful. And it’s almost the starting point of Canadian history.”

Gandhi is reminded of that every day. His office and studio are in an industrial building on the waterfront that was originally an annex to Pier 21, the landing point for many immigrants to Canada. Perhaps emblematic of his passion for his work, the space is also his sanctuary. “There’s no place I love more,” he says, whether he’s alone in it on the weekend or with his seven-member team during workdays, laughing and bouncing ideas off one another. A big open space with lots of natural light, only 40 feet from the harbour, Gandhi describes it as “very raw. Our tables are made of plywood with sawhorses; there’s just a lot of stuff all over the place.”

His practice is expanding across Canada and into the U.S., with projects in B.C.’s Okanagan and New York’s Catskills. “We’re all over the place, working in fabulous off-the-charts landscapes,” Gandhi says. Still, nothing makes him happier than to touch back down in Halifax and head back to the studio.

"The work is the refuge," he says. "I'm lucky to be in love with what I do for a living and to feel that it's my offering."