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Toronto's Integral House

Innovative concepts for a modern residence rise over a Rosedale ravine

What would your dream house look like? Think about it. And dream, baby, dream. Float down into the deepest sleep and stay there for a long while. You might begin to approximate the kind of dream that James Stewart had about 10 years ago, of a sumptuous house designed to liberate music and man.

This is a house that matters. Though it is still months from completion, the contribution of the Integral House to architecture here in Canada and places beyond promises to be immense. And so I bring this house to your attention now as a symphony of design, in which everything from the door handles to the windows has been contemplated and freshly cast.

Gimme shelter? Turns out there's more to a house than developers would have us believe. Look around at the carpet of sameness that has metastasized across North America. Radical departures from the norm are painfully rare; innovation and craft are regularly flattened by the steamrollers of convention. With the Integral House, however, we open ourselves to the dream of change.

This house — designed by Shim-Sutcliffe Architects of Toronto — is a singular treatise on the joys of the complex curve. Serpentine walls made of vertical glass separated by projecting fins of white oak form the gentle perimeter to the house, echoing the wisp of the creek in the valley below and the paths that wind from the back terrace through a forest of towering oaks, maple and beech. The architecture glorifies its ravine setting, with views of the majestic trees available from Rosedale's Roxborough Street clean through the house.

The exhibition of Integral House in progress, continues at the Eric Arthur Gallery at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, 230 College St., until April 28.

April 14, 2007 in Toronto Landmarks | Permalink

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Posted by: Toronto Landscaping | Jul 23, 2009 8:24:31 AM

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Posted by: | Jan 15, 2008 8:47:17 PM

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