amount of effort we put into design and the amount of time we take to design something. Tom: One thing that takes this house beyond the typical forms being built in this neighbourhood is the curtain wall. Was that an issue with the City? Andrew: No.We had support from the City. The neighbours were appealing it not on formal grounds, but on the grounds that they just didn’t want development next door to them. There were comments that the architecture wasn’t appropriate, but again we countered those comments quite quickly. The curtain wall is an interesting thing— it’s a site specific response. There is a major city boulevard between this house and the road. The distance from the centre of the road to the facade is a limiting distance which here allowed for around 85% of that elevation to be glazing, so all of a sudden the opportunity was there. What the client was asking for was one of our previous houses, which was a very private condition, unlike this site which looks out on to
the street. When we asked,‘what do you like about it?’ the response was all the glass, which is a purely visual response. For the house to become an armature for this big piece of glass, once we realized we could do it, we said, ‘this has to be all curtain wall then’. It comes together as being a conceptual response, a site specific response and a technical response. The owner knows about mechanical systems, so those three things also come together: concept, context and client to make the curtain wall achievable. Tom: It was a nice coincidence then, that the client was interested in extending their life out towards the city and having the bylaws support that. Andrew: Absolutely. The project turned around completely when we started to understand this condition. Rather than a lens, which was how we started, perceiving the city through this long north/south axis, it became very flat, like a screen. To actually get this site condition and then have a client that’s willing to allow you to push that idea to what even I think is a bit of an extreme— it’s a house defined by a sheet of
En conséquence, il existe deux stratégies : vous pouvez soit répondre de façon politique, ou vous pouvez répondre en les convainquant que l’architecture est appropriée, comme nous l’avons fait. Le document que nous avons rédigé consiste en un bref aperçu du modernisme qui règne dans ce voisinage
auquel ils tiennent tellement. Plein de choses découlent d’une architecture moderne. Il était donc question de rendre évident le fait que toutes ces choses existent et c’est le genre de vocabulaire que nous prévoyons utiliser.
soleil pour personne, et on n’agit pas comme de mauvais voisins. Je crois que vous avez le droit de créer les projets que vous voulez. Ce projet éla- bore sur une nouvelle réponse matérielle à la condition banlie- usarde, dans son cheminement en condition urbaine. Il parle du fait que vous pouvez y arriver à
affiche le fait qu’au sein d’une communauté, une personne a le droit de vivre comme elle l’entend? Andrew : Je crois que c’est ce que ça dit au client. Je crois qu’aussi longtemps que l’on s’en tient à certaines lignes directrices, on ne bloque le
Tom : Est-ce que cette maison
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O n S ite review
T ransformations
I ssue 7 2002
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