Homes that fit into tight spots

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How does it fit? That is the question that builders often get asked, by city planners or by the neighbours, when they add housing to an existing community.

There was another kind of “fit” in question with Pearl Block townhouses in the Oaklands district of Victoria. The site was a triangular lot, wedged between a row of houses and a townhouse complex. It was constrained and awkward.

That weird geometry proved to be a gift. The development company Aryze and Vancouver architect D’Arcy Jones transformed the lot into six townhouses, which provide high-quality homes for young couples and families – and their triangular piece of city is bringing people together.

“In some cultures, triangles are bad luck,” Aryze partner Luke Mari said as we arrived at the houses on a rainy afternoon. “One of our colleagues told us: don’t build there! But there’s a little corner at the rear that makes it a parallelogram.”

Problem solved. A few years later, the project stands complete, and in some ways it stands out. Its flat-roofed boxes march diagonally across the site, each one a bit farther forward than its neighbour. Their surfaces are clad in thickly textured rock-dash stucco and smooth charcoal-grey cement board.

This is the work of Mr. Jones, an exceptionally creative architect who usually designs single-family homes. When the builders called him with their initial idea, “I promised that instead of three houses, we could do five,” Mr. Jones says. “But I had no idea how.” He came through, with that diagonal arrangement. It produced six houses that range from two to three bedrooms and about 1,600 to 2,000 square feet.

But for all their distinctiveness in form and material, these houses are quite neighbourly. All face straight-on to the street. This means the six Pearl Block households don’t overlook the homes to the left and right – a bungalow and a townhouse complex. It also means the six households have eyes on the street.

On my visit to the site, I stood talking with Mr. Mari under a tall plane tree and watched the comings and goings: a young mother returned home with two kids in their stroller. Another woman pushed back her blinds and gave us a wave.

Then, in a window of the middle house, appeared Kyle Empringham. He soon came downstairs to welcome us in. We moved past the garage (converted to an office) and moved upstairs to the second-floor kitchen and living room, which enjoys views in two directions. Mr. Empringham lives here with his partner and a roommate. They enjoy the views in two directions, he said, and also the fact of being close enough to their neighbours. Their rooftop deck has high walls that protect privacy. There’s a baby next door, but her cries don’t penetrate the well-insulated walls.

The complex, he said, has made good neighbours. “You can always see signs of life, and everyone gets along well,” he said. “It’s a very eclectic group of people and I think we’re all between 30 to 40 years of age.”

This is what the developers aspire to. Run by millennials Mr. Mari, Ryan Goodman and Matthew Jardine, the firm is committed to contemporary architecture and to building varied forms of housing – not just custom single-family homes for affluent Victorians, which is where the easier money is, but apartments for people from different walks of life. Recently they’ve started building mixed-income rental apartments.

They are also committed to modern architecture, sensitively done. And as the architect Mr. Jones argues, Pearl Block fits its architectural context in a more subtle way. Its walls are clad in that rock-dash stucco; the cement contains particles of gravel, and was applied in three coats by hand. The result is heavily textured and looks, as Mr. Jones accurately points out, like the stucco walls on the Craftsman-style houses so typical of Victoria.

Inside, the houses reflect Mr. Jones’s unique sensibility. He generally designs single-family homes that have certain qualities: they are not entirely open, but often include separate rooms and unexpected nooks; and they often feature materials left in an unfinished state, balancing smooth finishes with some wabi-sabi.

That’s true here as well. Mr. Empringham’s house has a staircase guard made of Douglas fir plywood, finished only with a light stain, which contrasts with the black lacquer of the kitchen cabinets. Out front, a concrete pillar shows the imprint of the boards that made it. These decisions are subtle, and not expensive, but they reveal an attention to touch and texture that is rare in contemporary buildings.

But the key design move here is spatial. The space in front of the houses, roughly triangular, provides both driveways and some room to hang out. While modest, it is a sort of communal space that is so often missing from contemporary townhouses and apartments.

On my visit, a kids’ bike and a few toys were scattered around. Mr. Empringham says that people are always hanging out there. Why? “Because it’s not a rectangle, your first instinct is that this is some kind of play surface,” suggests Mr. Jones, the architect. And that seems right: though it’s a space for cars, it is sufficiently small and unusual that it invites other uses.

Which is precisely the idea. In a city and a country where the single-family home remains dominant, Pearl Block presents a model – incremental, but real – of how people might live closer together, in style.

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