Canadian Interiors: Fall 2009 Edition

Fall 2009

BEST OF CANADA

Winners of our 12th annual Design Awards

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Fall 2009

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Cover – 20 W Hotel Downtown Altlanta, designed by Burdifielk.

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Contents

12th Annual Best of Canada Design Awards INTRO & WINNERS – 7

By David Lasker HONOURABLE MENTIONS – 33 Products can only be as sustainable as the materials and processes used to make them. That’s why we created Eco Intelligence® — a smarter way of thinking.

BEST OF CANADA WINNERS Armstrong Avenue Residence

22

Mildred’s Temple Kitchen

19

Boustrophedon Garden

29

Obakki

26

Cascade House

23

Planna

31

Charlie Sales Centre

27

Red Bull Lounge

12

Clinique OVO

14

Ryerson School of Interior Design

18

Fourth Street House

24

Fuel

10

George Brown College Centre for Hospitality and Culinary Arts

15

Green Roof + Carport

30

Isola 8

31

The Juggernaut Offices

11

Ryerson Student Information and Advising Centre

16

Visualizm

32

W Hotel Downtown Atlanta

20

W Hotel Downtown Atlanta Condominium Sales Centre

28

best of canada

2009 Design Awards

Our goals are quite simple: to design products that benefit the environment in every phase of their production and use, offering fabrics that reduce their impact on our shared natural resources.

Eco Intelligent ® brand fabrics meet established criteria for: • Product and Material Transparency • Chemical and Material Safety • Recyclability or Recycled Content • Renewable Energy and Resource Efficiency Eco Intelligent® fabrics are manufactured by Victor, a leader in eco-engineering for over ten years. They are available from leading furniture manufacturers and fabric distributors. Find them at VictorGroup. com and see what it means to be Eco Intelligent.®

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Fall 2009 VOL.46 NO.7

Publisher

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12th annual Best of Canada Design Awards

After 12 years, the Best of Canada Design Competition remains the only awards program in Canada focusing on interior design projects and products without regard to size, budget or location. We welcome submissions from designers, architects, craftspersons and students.

This year, we received 146 entries from across the country. The level of creativity was impressively high. The five judges had their work cut out winnowing the field to 35 nominees and, after further discussion, 20 winners.

We would like to thank our panel of judges: Inger Bartlett, of Bartlett and Associates; Jamie Cheveldeyoff, owner of Koma Designs; Annick Mitchell, chair, Ryerson School of Interior Design; Bruce Stratton, principal, G. Bruce Stratton Architects; and Paul Syme, partner in 3rd Uncle design.

The projects were each judged anonymously and on their individual merit.

Whenever a conflict of interest between judge and project arose, that judge was given the option to leave the room or simply abstain from the debate.

Congratulations to the 20 winners and 15 honourable mentions, who were feted at the Best of Canada Awards Gala at IIDEX/ NeoCon Canada on Sept. 25th, at Toronto’s Direct Energy Centre.

– By David Lasker

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We would like to thank all those who entered the 12th annual Best of Canada Design Awards.

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Winners

Offices

FUEL Bartlett & Associates, Toronto

When the client’s name is spelled out in uppercase letters – FUEL Advertising – chances are that client wants an in-yourface office interior. Inger Bartlett, founder of her eponymous design firm, took the hint. Waxing alliterative, she describes the aesthetic for her design scheme as “power, punch and pop.” (And it packs plenty of snap and crackle, too.)

FUEL, the Canadian subsidiary of Chicago-based Draft/FCB, wanted its Toronto branch to exude hip stylishness to motivate employees and attract new ones, give a strong sense of arrival for visitors and reinforce the company’s brand.

Wasting not a moment as the arrival sequence unfolds, the office makes a robust statement right from the front door. The

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reception area is dominated by the honking big colour accent of a wide, candyapple-red wall emblazoned with the client’s supersize “The Power of the Possible” wordmark. This red wall plays off against the pure white seating arrayed against it. Overhead, parallel lines of corrugated metal ceiling panels with naked light bulbs punching through act as a wayfinding device, pointing the way to the boardroom. Here, “supersize” is again the operative world. Big sliding barn doors open to reveal the 25-foot boardroom table.

Framing the creative work area are white and lime-green acrylic panels bolted together to form 13-foot-high screens.

Elsewhere, vibrant pink and orange panels identify the client-services bullpen. Task

chair fabrics in each area reiterate the colour code.

The “pop” in Bartlett’s triple-p motto is supplied by Pop Art flowers and birch trees on Marimekko fabric panels on the walls of the lounge and café. Inspirational sayings from John Lennon, Steve Jobs and Kurt Vonnegut, in black on plain white canvases, visually link back to the words on the reception-area wall.

Design team: inger Bartlett, Michelle Gray, Joel stevenett, Genevieve Bergman and alexandra samouk

Photos by Tom Arban

Offices

THE JUGGERNAUT OFFICES Giannone Petricone Associates Inc. Architects, Toronto

Segmented, continuous, ribbon-like bulkheads that rise from the floor to wrap the walls and ceiling are a house specialty at Giannone Petricone, and at The Juggernaut, they really go to town. The bulkheads assume a convex polygonal profile, creating an angular, retro look seemingly deriving from the space-station interior in 2001: A Space Odyssey. How appropriate

Photo by Ben Rahn/ A-Frame

for the home of a post-production studio for broadcast, film and interactive media.

The Juggernaut occupies the ground floor of an old warehouse building in downtown Toronto. Giannone Petricone left the existing structure intact and treated it as a sheath for a new lining of suspended plywood ribbons, laminated on either side with rubber and plastic.

Drywall, glass, Venetian plaster, glazed tile and walnut millwork are layered above the brick sheath, creating a rich, complex, textural palette.

Controlled light, an integral aspect of the Juggernaut’s working environment, became a thematic design element. The sequence progresses from the light-filled reception area to the studios, where lighting is dimmer and carefully apportioned.

Bulkheads encircle the reception space like giant film strips, transitioning into built-in seating, countertops and surfaces for display, and behind the reception desk, splicing into a pillowing wall of Venetian plaster that seems to ooze out from the bulkheads’ edges. Fixed to the ceiling with steel suspension rods and to the masonry wall with plywood gussets below the windows, a single bulkhead morphs into a counter, or returns as a small object shelf in the depths of the plaster wall. One tall, straight segment has been notched to resemble a miniature post from a Lincoln Logs toy building set.

The bulkheads offer framed views of the raw fabric of timber and brick. They also conceal the deficiencies of the host building, though at the cost of partially blocking daylight and window views.

A sense of tension animates this interior. Evocative of a juggernaut, the bulkheads seem to be an unstoppable force pushing against the base-building shell, threatening to burst the walls asunder.

Fall 2009 Best of Canada CANADIAN INTERIORS 11

Offices

Red Bull Lounge SSDG, Vancouver

Red Bull, the Austrian-developed energy drink, sells over three-billion units a year in over 130 countries. When the company isn’t sponsoring windsurfing, snowboarding, cliff-diving, freestyle motocross, breakdancing events or art shows and concerts, it’s busy marketing those sponsorships. One way is to park a campaign car with a giant Red Bull can strapped to the roof at an event, where the lure of a free Red Bull sample draws thirsty crowds.

Another method of building buzz is by hosting company parties. Enter SSDG, the new name and acronym for the venerable Vancouver design firm formerly known as Seeton Shinkewski Design Group. Charged with creating an event space adjacent to Red Bull’s Canadian office, in Vancouver’s

Office category sponsored by

Yaletown district, SSDG principal Susan Steeves opted for “an environment that reflected Red Bull’s relaxed and urban corporate culture and lifestyle, rather than the high energy of their drink product.”

Steeves and SSDG interior designer Keena Manley envisioned a multi-purpose room that would be a blank canvas. It is easily shaped with lighting and furniture to suit a variety of promotional events, such as premieres of videos documenting Red Bull sponsorships.

The bottom of the drink can was appropriated as a recurring motif. Circular lights highlight the dj booth, back bar and the exterior of the washrooms, where interior walls are clad in ceramic tiles with a circular pattern.

Working green, SSDG reused the existing wood columns and brick walls. The envelope provides urban-loft warmth and visual interest and makes a connection to the historic urban context.

Design team: susan steeves and Keena Manley

Photo by Nick Didlick

Institutional

Clinique OVO NFOE et associés architectes, Montreal

OVO, a Montreal fertility clinic, opened Quebec’s first private umbilical-cord blood preservation centre in December 2008. The centre cryogenically preserves stem cells found in the tissues surrounding the arteries of a newborn’s umbilical cord, freezing them at very low temperature (below −150 °C ). The preserved cells can help fight certain diseases later in the infant’s life, should the need arise.

NFOE et associés architectes clearly delineated the clinic’s public and private realms. The public zone of the reception and consulting areas highlights the reservoir display, where cord blood is stored, with a futuristic aesthetic conveying the 14 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2009

clinic’s advanced technology.

The reservoir, wrapped in a perforated metal screen, reposes in a glass-enclosed room adjacent to the consultation area, with its black epoxy slab counters and frosted-glass partitions. These two areas are framed by an overhead bulkhead finished in white glossy laminate and below by white ceramic-tile flooring. A wall of frosted glass filters the light from the private laboratory areas behind it. The reception area, meanwhile, is finished with a black laminate ceiling and black linoleum floor to ensure that it serves as a neutral background to the display area.

In contrast to the public area’s white

and black, the private ultrasound and lab areas are a red zone: glossy red paint for the walls, and ceiling, red linoleum for the floors and perforated red Barrisol stretchceiling panels at the perimeter glazing.

The corridor, with its colourful, serpentine walls, evokes the umbilical cord.

The circular floor plan of the ultrasound examination room and its round indirect pendant lighting fixture suggest the womb.

Design team: Rafie Sossanpour, partner-incharge; Masa Fukushima, senior designer; Philippe McCormack, project manager; Maxime Pion, designer; and Philippe Martin, technician

Photos by Stéphane Brügger

Institutional

George Brown College Centre for Hospitality and Culinary Arts Kearns Mancini Architects with Gow Hastings Architects Inc., Toronto

The Chefs’ House, offering fine-dining cuisine at popular prices, is one of Toronto’s great culinary bargains. George Brown College Centre for Hospitality and Culinary Arts had a previous teaching restaurant open to the public, Siegfried’s, but the room was dismal and dowdy. The longawaited Chefs’ House, on the other hand, offers a setting stylish and elegant enough for the most discriminating gourmand.

No longer confined to rear and basement kitchens, George Brown’s student chefs are now visible in a culinary performance through a two-storey glass facade that exposes four kitchen “labs” to the street. The students’ starched white chef uniforms are visible against a backdrop of gleaming stainless-steel workstations, ranges, ovens, washing stations, and racks of pots and pans. These exposed labs reflect the changing profile of the culinary industry by glamorizing the preparation of food and offering students a hands-on experience, rather than learning within more conventional demonstration kitchens. And the student chefs’ performance advertises and brands the college.

The interior one-ups that old standby of restaurant design, lining the walls in mirPhotos by Tom Arban

ror so that an inward-facing diner doesn’t have to stare at a blank wall. Here, instead of mirrors, plasma monitors display closeup views of food preparation.

Elsewhere in the Hospitality faculty’s renovation, the basement was expanded to make room for additional culinary labs and to increase back-of-house storage for food and supplies. A newly reworked central atrium at the main level provides an expansive area for functions. Part of the second floor was cut away to create a double-height space over the atrium with a circular mezzanine accommodating a

new student cafe. On the third floor, a cantilevered meeting room adds to the visual connections.

Design team: From Kearns Mancini, Peter Ng, project architect; Jonathan Kearns, partner-in-charge; and Nolan Bentley, Keith Button, Dan McNeil, Ivana Ristic and Erika Zaphiratos. From Gow Hastings, Valerie Gow and Philip Hastings, partners; James Burkitt, associate; Jimmy Sun, architect; and Greg Demaiter, intern architect

Fall 2009 Best of Canada CANADIAN INTERIORS 15

Institutional

Ryerson Student Information and Advising Centre Gow Hastings Architects Inc., Toronto

Ryerson University’s new Student Information and Advising Centre, located at the Gerrard Street entrance of the downtown Toronto campus, is the first point of contact for potential students. It is a new model of delivering information to students at the university; to accommodate the needs of a diverse student popula-

tion, this central resource for all student inquiries and referrals eases interaction between students and their advisors. Here students have easy access to information on issues they may experience at school.

Upon entry, the students step into the lounge, a welcoming space for waiting and socializing. The adjacent counter serves

the dual purpose of help desk and, when not in use, a touchdown area.

Views to the exterior courtyard give a lush green (weather permitting) backdrop to the space. The lounge area is delineated by a bamboo floor inset centrally within the space. Custom millwork wraps around an existing structural column and connects with the ceiling plane, incorporating light coves and linear diffusers. Millwork displays Ryerson brochures with low, open shelving that permits students to help themselves to the literature. Flat-screen monitors mounted on either side of the lounge update students on information of interest.

The materials palette, in keeping with the sustainable mandate for the space, feature such natural products as bamboo and linoleum flooring. Carpet tile and other components were chosen for their low-VOC rating, ensuring minimal offgassing and high indoor-air quality. White quartz counters, brushed aluminum and glass panels contrast against earth-toned colours.

Design team: partner Valerie Gow and associate James Burkitt

16 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2009

Photo by Tom Arban

Institutional

Ryerson School of Interior Design Gow Hastings Architects Inc., Toronto

Gow Hastings Architects set several goals in their renovation of Ryerson University’s School of Interior Design, in Toronto. The ground-floor challenge was to relocate the main entrance from a service lane to its front door on Church Street. This necessitated the redesign of the lobby, main office, chairperson’s office, faculty lounge, gallery, resource centre, students’ office and studio space.

Newly installed floor-to-ceiling glass opens up the main office to the corridor.

Natural light was brought deep into the space by punching new window openings into the existing brick facade.

Fibreoptics enliven the corridor ramp with a constantly changing display of bold

18 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2009

colours. The lights project onto a white folded drywall plane that highlights the subtle colour changes and conceals the large fixtures. To make this main circulation corridor feel wider, a linear slot, sunk to one side of the floor, houses uplighting, which shines through a softening, milk-glass lens. The slot also conceals fastenings for the brushed stainless-steel flat-bar handrail.

On the third floor, four classrooms can now be opened to the main corridor to give a gallery setting for functions like the year-end show of student work. Fullheight sliding doors incorporate tackable surfaces for display. Coloured and translucent glass panels in the corridor allow

glimpses into the classrooms.

The project takes advantage of the yellow brick and wood structure of the existing warehouse space. The materials palette features natural products like maple veneer, cork and linoleum flooring, and low-VOC products. Carpet tile and energy-efficient fluorescent light fixtures were selected for their low environmental impact.

Design team: Valerie Gow, partner; James Burkitt, associate; Jimmy Sun, architect; and Janice Lee, intern architect

Photo by Tom Arban

Hospitality

Mildred’s Temple Kitchen du Toit Architects Limited, Toronto

Mildred Pierce thrived as a favourite Toronto restaurant for nearly 20 years. When the lease ran up, owner Donna Dooher and Brian Brownlie, a principal at du Toit Architects, embarked on a two-year research, rebranding and design collaboration that culminated in Mildred’s Temple Kitchen.

The sparkling new eatery is the culinary jewel in a formerly defunct industrial zone in the downtown’s west end, now sprouting trendy businesses and yuppie condos.

“The demographic at Mildred Pierce had been getting older,” Brownlie says.

“That’s why we went to Liberty Village, to attract your 29-plus type while keeping on Donna’s more sophisticated, older clientele.” Some liken the new, 6,400-squarefoot resto to an airport lounge, and Brownlie takes it as a compliment because the project is a multifunctional space, not just a restaurant. The space is flexible enough to host corporate events, weddings and fashion shows.

Leaving the core of the existing concrete shell untouched, Brownlie inserted a raised platform with a dropped ceiling to frame the open line kitchen with its counter top made from a single, 4-foot by-25-foot piece of stainless steel. This is the focal point – the eponymous temple – around which

Photos by James Twine/du Toit Architects Limited (top) and Ayako Kitta/du Toit Architects Limited (bottom)

all activities revolve. The kitchen rests on a raised platform where spectators can gather round for dining events.

Besides the main dining area, there is a raised area at the bar for solo eaters, who can chat with the chef and interact visually with other diners. The curved banquette at the back of the room pays homage to the original restaurant, which was furnished with eight silk-wrapped banquettes, (once used in filming The Freshman, starring Marlon Brandon and Matthew Broderick).

As for the elegant chairs, Brownlie insisted, even before they had decided on a location, that Dooher stock up on the No. 71 chair, a.k.a. “the chair with the hole in the middle,” a perennially popular part of Knoll’s 1948 Saarinen collection. It fits a skinny ass and a big ass – you can’t beat it.

Design team: Brian Brownlie, David Dennis, Yvonne Lam and James Twine

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Hospitality

W Hotel Downtown Atlanta Burdifilek, Toronto

At W Hotels, “each designer is asked to pick up some clues from the location and to take a contemporary, cool viewpoint on it while adding their own creativity,” says the firm’s global brand leader, Eva Ziegler.

Burdifilek’s take on the surroundings, when commissioned to design the interiors of the first W Hotel and condominium complex in downtown Atlanta, was to create a modern interpretation of a park oasis in the centre of the financial district.

The entryway draws guests in through a lush garden wall to the double-height lobby, which features a serpentine, handsculpted solid walnut wall. Suspended above the reception and check-in area, a shimmering mobile made of hundreds of metal leaves, inspired by a tree canopy, reflects glints of light onto the charcoalcoloured stone floor. A 22-foot-high water feature, culminating in a luminescent onyx reflecting pool, soothes. In the Living Room bar, a feature of W properties worldwide, bentwood screens and curved seating encourage guests to feel at home in the urban jungle.

Upstairs, the suites (Single, Double, Loft, Wow and Extreme Wow) are decorated in mulberry, teal and deep indigo, Macassar wood and glossy acrylics.

Design team: Diego Burdi, design director; Paul Filek, managing director; Merrill Fung, project manager; Tom Yip and Jeremy Mendonca, senior designers; Mariko Nakagawa, William Lau and Helen Chen, designers; and Jacky Ngan, Anna Jurkiewicz, Edwin Reyes and Maria Kakarantza, CAD production

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Photo by Ben Rahn/A-Frame

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Residential

Armstrong Avenue Residence Taylor Smyth Architects, Toronto

With himself as client, architect Michael Taylor had the chance to treat his own home renovation as a laboratory to explore new ideas and materials to use in his practice. Tucked into a Toronto laneway, the two-storey brick building was built as a dairy in 1912. The raw, gritty industrial exterior, in a graffiti-marked laneway, remains basically untouched. All the more delightful then, is the discovery of the hidden, contemporary, light-filled interior revealed after passing through the unmarked metal entry door.

Taylor opened up the living room to the garden by installing a glass wall with sliding doors. The exterior deck, made of sustainably harvested ipe, folds up at the far end of the garden to become a bench, 22 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2009

extends inside the house, appears to slide under the glass wall, then folds down again to become steps in the living room.

In addition, the stone on the side walls of the garden reappears inside, flanking the steps. Particularly at night, with the exterior brick walls illuminated, the garden seems to extend into the living room.

Inside, gypsum-board walls peel back to expose portions of the original brick, further tying the interior to the garden. A 4-by-8-foot skylight opens the ceiling over the kitchen island, emphasizing its role as the symbolic centre of the house. In keeping with the prevailing continuity-of-materials concept, Taylor wrapped the island in bamboo veneer to make it look like a seamless extension of the bamboo floor.

A gas fireplace, enclosed within a cantilevered shroud of blackened steel evoking the building’s industrial origins, slides out from the kitchen and into the living room.

Various materials have been brought together in unexpected ways: anodized aluminum trim creates crisp edges at the ipe wood steps; stainless-steel wall tiles reflect the strip LED lighting; and walnut and blackened steel frame a dining room table topped with Panelite, a translucent honeycomb fibreglass material, lit underneath by LED lighting recessed flush into the floor.

Designer: Michael Taylor

Photos by Peter Gumpesberger and Toni Hafkenscheid

Residential

Cascade House Paul Raff Studio, Toronto

Cascade House, in Toronto’s tony Forest Hill district, was commissioned by a family relocating from Arizona who wanted their new, northern dwelling to capture a semblance of the Southwest’s abundant natural light. The two-and-a-half-storey house is configured in an L-shape around an outdoor swimming pool. The orientation aligns precisely with the points of the compass to best exploit the low winter sun through large expanses of south-facing glazing.

There are two particularly striking features. One is the street facade’s 13-foottall screen of 475 vertically stacked sheets of heavy, jagged-cut translucent glass. The screen transmits daylight into the living room, while adding a waterfall-like veil of privacy from the street (hence the residence’s name). The other memorable feature is the freestanding monolithic slate wall that acts as a central spine. Framing the staircase, it rises from the lower level to the top floor, creating a vertical visual connection throughout the house. Random apertures provide niches for children’s play and displaying art; rough and polished slate tiles alternate in a complicated pattern. An energy-economizing addition as well, the slate wall acts as a thermal mass, absorbing solar heat during the day and slowly releasing it at night.

The living room, dining room and a powder room can be closed off from the kitchen and family room at the rear of the house, allowing parents to entertain while their children play. The children’s rooms and the home office, on the second floor, are topped by a master suite in a rooftop pavilion.

Design team: Paul Raff, architect and principal; Rick Galezowski, Samantha Scroggie and Adam Thom, architects; Scott Barker and Robel Rojas, intern architects; and Gillian Lazikk, interior designer

Photos by Ben Rahn/A-Frame

Fall 2009 Best of Canada CANADIAN INTERIORS 23

Residential

Fourth Street House Michael Moxam, Toronto

The lakeside community of New Toronto is undergoing a renaissance as young families flock to the neighbourhood, attracted by affordable prices and a well-developed community infrastructure. The mature housing stock, built in the 1920s for workers at the now-defunct Goodyear plant, is characterized by one- and two-storey brick structures. The 25-foot-wide lots and shared driveways present a consistent rhythm of porches and gables along treelined streets.

24 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2009

Says architect Michael Moxam, “This was the antithesis of today’s customary monster-home reno. Fourth Street House shows how a careful spatial reconfiguration can meet the needs of contemporary family life while retaining a piece of Toronto’s residential history.” The project also shows one way to create extra, new space without extending the house’s footprint, thereby avoiding the tedious process of applying for a zoning variance from the Committee of Adjustment.

In its “before” state, the wood-frame bungalow was a rabbit warren of little rooms. None of the interior walls were structural, so Moxam was able to gut the house back to the masonry shell. Into this open plan, he inserted a T-shaped cherry element. The floating, canopy-like ceiling delineates the kitchen/dining and living zones. The thickened cherry wall gives visual support for the ceiling and separation between the communal space and the washroom. The wall discreetly houses the kitchen appliances as built-ins, which, says Moxam, “gives the appearance of a library, rather than a kitchen, sitting in the middle of the space.”

The dining-room window overlooks the shared driveway. To block the view and add privacy while maintaining daylight, Moxam filled in the opening with glass brick.

He also effectively doubled the size of the two children’s bedrooms by borrowing space from the attic. The low roof pitch permitted construction of a new floor above each bedroom, accessible by a steel ship’s ladder. The lower floor is dedicated to living and studying space; the upper floor has a skylit sleeping loft. Quite a lot of house packed into 1,200 square feet!

Designer: Michael Moxam

Photos by Richard Johnson

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Retail

Obakki Mcfarlane / Green / Biggar, Vancouver

Vancouver’s Treana Peake founded the Obakki label in 2005 to nurture B.C. fashion designers. The label’s name is Japanese for “ghost” or “change.” In an interview with industry rag Daily News Record, Peake defined its market niche as

“a high-end, luxury line but with a casual feel and a rustic vibe….classic pieces but with a bit of originality and a somewhat fashion-forward attitude.”

With those parameters in mind, local architects Mcfarlane / Green / Biggar cre-

ated the 5,500-square-foot Vancouver flagship retail store. The as-found industrialloft shell had massive, rough-hewn timber posts, and walls of brick and concrete patterned by wooden construction formwork.

To complement this “messy” aesthetic, MGB added a crisp, pristine, knife-edged white ceiling and wall planes to indicate the boundaries of program spaces.

One challenge of designing a high-end shop interior is striking a balance between display quantity and quality. That is: show too few articles and shoppers will deduce that their size is out of stock; show too many and the place looks cluttered and down-market. MBG struck an elegant compromise with custom display racks that are nothing more than ceiling-hung thin steel rails. The clothing hovers above the floor, preserving a luxurious vista of open retail space unattainable with floorstanding display units.

The designers collaborated with Vancouver artisan Brent Comber to develop a signature millwork element. The result is a stylishly shattered wood transaction counter and cashwrap that acts as a backdrop for white Corian jewelry-display trays.

MGB designed and built in-house custom chandeliers using translucent acrylic petals suspended from light boxes; the sculptural objects look like an origami swarm of blades from an Alexander Calder mobile. In the rear corners, two ceilingsuspended hoops are fitted with curtains that can be pulled shut to form change rooms. Normally, the curtains are open, preserving the store’s uncluttered spaciousness.

Design team: Michael Green, Michelle Biggar and Hozumi Nakai

Retail category sponsored by

Photo by Scott Morgan

Marketing

Charlie Sales Centre Cecconi Simone, Toronto

Developers are the ultimate optimists.

A successful condo sales centre should convey that sentiment, getting tire-kickers’ hearts pounding, adrenalin pumping and chequebooks fluttering. Great Gulf Homes’s sales centre for its Charlie tower, in downtown Toronto, assuredly does just that.

Cecconi Simone, veterans in the salescentre biz, settled on a design concept fusing old and new. The “old” was the space’s existing wood post-and-beam construction and ceiling decking. Cecconi Simone exploited this aspect to fashion a layered, textured space, warmed up with orange, brown and natural shades.

Photo by Joy von Tiedemann

Existing windows were covered to block natural light and permit a more controlled environment. Walls are clad with back-lit fabric, framing glass panels with silkscreened images of marketing materials and suite floor plans. These panels encourage prospective buyers to browse the layouts, furthering enthusiasm for closing the deal.

Slashing through the space, a 41-foot counter cantilevers from an illuminated trough. The counter displays the architectural model and houses custom-designed organic glass sculptures and a garden bed; it also offers a surface for sales associates to unroll plans for potential buyers

to view. Above, canvas tarps hang like a continuous market umbrella from the ceiling, highlighting the counter.

Design team: Anna Simone, principal; Jude Thomson, associate; Pauline Ayoub, senior designer; Kelly Wall, Elvis Chan and Alberto Perez; and Firas Yousif, junior designer

Marketing category sponsored by

Marketing

W Hotel Downtown Atlanta Condominium Sales Center Burdifilek, Toronto

“We give visitors two ‘bangs’ here,” says Burdifilik design director Diego Burdi of his firm’s 6,500-square-foot W Hotel Downtown Atlanta Condominium Sales Center.

The first is a foretaste of the “fun and flirty” ambiance associated with W Hotels.

Visitors are greeted by an expansive, gleaming black terrazzo floor with an oasis-like conversation area. “Atlanta is all about being green and lush,” Burdi explains. He makes reference to the urban context with bits of dichroic mirror assembled as pixilated leaves and flowers, superimposed on a wall-panel system of smoked grey-green glass with varying amounts of colour saturation. The floral-bloom motif repeats at giant scale on the upholstery fabric on the curving ottoman that forms part of the seating group. This includes a great big circular sofa and a playful, suspended white wicker cocoon swing.

The second “bang” is the closing rooms, where soothing cream walls and soft indirect lighting “make you feel like you’re entering heaven,” as Burdi says. A glass storefront with opaque vertical stripes of double-sided mirror partially screen the closing rooms from the lobby.

Marketing category sponsored by

Actually, there’s a third “bang”: the model suite. Visitors will relate to the stock pieces of furniture by the likes of B&B Italia, Minotti and Knoll that they may already own or can order for themselves. Then they’re intrigued to see them used in such eclectic settings. In the bedroom, for instance, a tall, polished chrome sculpture climbs the custom-stained zebra wood wall.

An unusual grey colour scheme ties the display rooms together. “We wanted to do

something neutral enough to attract the masses, but different enough to create a point of memory,” say Burdi.

Design team: Diego Burdi, design director; Paul Filek, managing partner; Mariko Nakagawa, William Lau, Helen Chen and Anthony Tey, designers; and Anna Jurkiewicz and Edwin Reyes, CAD production

Photos by Ben Rahn/ A-Frame

Landscape Design

Boustrophedon Garden Plant Architect, Toronto

“Boustrophedon” is Greek for “ox-turning,” as in going back and forth like an ox pulling a plough across a field and turning at the end of each row, onto the next. In Canada’s Dominion Land Survey, townships are divided into a square grid of 36 sections, starting with Section 1 in the southeast corner and the numbering proceeding boustrophedonically until Section 36 in the northwest corner is reached.

All this by way of defining the 50-cent word identifying one of 11 Ephemeral Gardens commissioned for Quebec City’s year-long 400th-anniversary festivities in 2008. The Boustrophedon Garden was designed by Toronto’s Plant Architect, whose members delight in creating projects with Photo by Jacques Bourdages

a formidable intellectual program. It also commemorates Quebec founder Samuel de Champlain, who domesticated the countryside and initiated subsistence farming to ensure that his settlement would survive.

Besides plowing, there’s the weaving of cloth, another activity by the settlers that the design sought to express. The garden’s pattern was “woven” over the course of the summer, with increasing numbers of plants, neoprene flag markers, concrete and steel weight markers, ropes and photographs.

The site’s length represents an axis of time with an embedded wood calendar in the ground and along the bench wall, marking the duration of the garden festival in weekly increments. Rows of

herbs and vegetables (chives, bee balm, sunflowers, bush beans, onions and heritage tomatoes) ran the length of the garden, each with a corresponding set of overhead ropes and height-marking posts.

Each week, plant measurements and a photograph of the garden were taken and permanently recorded; overhead ropes correspond to each furrow and significant life-cycle event. As plants died back after the harvest, the permanent structural record of the garden calendar remained.

Design team: Lisa Rapoport, Mary Tremain, Chris Pommer, Jane Hutton, Elise Shelley and Jessica Craig

Fall 2009 Best of Canada CANADIAN INTERIORS 29

Landscape Design

Green Roof + Carport Cecconi Simone, Toronto

Not just an oasis in the city but a secret garden, this carport with laneway-only access conceals its expansiveness and complexity from passersby. The design fulfills several objectives. The client wanted to walk the green talk by building a green roof on his carport - to make the rear entry to his home as powerful as the front entry, gain extra living space without extending the house’s footprint, and enhance the view from his bedroom window.

A simple materials palette of ipe wood, stainless steel and concrete balances the greenery, consisting of ornamental grasses, vines, hedges and a venerable walnut tree. The planting also serves to soften the hard landscaping elements, which include an integrated “fireplace” in the back wall of the garden for candle burning. Planters and blinds on the sides give privacy from adjacent properties. The parking pad does double duty, sans the car, as an overflow entertainment space.

Tempting though it may have been to turn the carport’s top into a usable roof deck, this surface is only accessible by a temporary ladder for maintenance purposes, in accordance with city bylaws (and courtesy to the neighbours).

With its comfortable seating, lush greenery and extensive nightscape lighting, the carport garden makes the perfect summer setting for that Rodgers and Hammerstein song “Some Enchanted Evening.”

Design team: principal Anna Simone and Carlo Borrelli

30 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2009

Photos by Joy von Tiedemann

Products

Isola 8 Nienkämper, Toronto

Having rung the changes on organically shaped furniture for Nienkämper with Blob, Kloud and Wavelength seating, design superstar Karim Rashid now goes 1980s-retro with Isola 8 lounge seating.

The butting together of colour-blocked hard edges and curves evoke Cassina’s 1982 Torso chair by Paolo Deganello, a founder of Archizoom, the group of radi-

cal Florentine designers. The Isola 8 as pictured, with its back covered in a giantscale, fun MACtac pattern and the seat in optic nerve-jangling pink, is just the ticket to shake tasteful minimalist Modernism by the scruff of its neck.

“Isola 8” derives from the Italian word for “island” and the number of people that the lounge accommodates. As the numeral

indicates, it is intended for areas such as lobbies, lounges, libraries and public venues rather than single seating.

Passing the green test, Isola 8 is made with FSC-certified laminated wood products and soy-based foam.

Designer: Karim Rashid

Products

Planna Inscape, Holland Landing, Ont.

Planna, a storage-based casegood and credenza system, takes inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, the Pennsylvania dwelling built in 1934. Its intersecting horizontal and vertical planes combine with off-modular floating tops to evoke Fallingwater’s deck, which canti-

levers dramatically over a rushing river.

Back-painted glass adds a warm, residential feel.

Like Inscape’s other office specialty products, Planna boasts remarkable flexibility, thanks to its 1½-inch incremental adjustability. It can be configured as a stand-alone casegood in a private office, integrated with panel systems or used as a collaborative worktable in an open-office benching application.

The 20-gauge steel construction is 100 per cent recyclable, earning Greenguard Certification.

Fall 2009 Best of Canada CANADIAN INTERIORS 31

Products

Visualizm AV unit IZM, Edmonton

Regionalism is alive and well and drove the design of IZM’s sleek Visualizm AV (audio-video) unit. “The simple, straight lines of the prairie inspired our entire line,” says Jerad Mack, partner and co-founder of the Edmonton-based firm.

Form follows function here insofar as the user knows intuitively what goes where. The slot at the left, for instance, gives access for pulling out the CD-DVD storage drawer. The door on the right is fitted with smoked glass that is opaque

enough to conceal the receiver, Tivo, VCR and other system components, yet transparent enough to be permeable to infrared signals that enable the components to be operated by remote control.

As for the motivation to create a cabinet to accommodate stereo and home-theatre gear, Mack says, “People were always telling us that there’s not much out there for good-looking audio-visual cabinets.” His informal market research proved to be spot on because, he says, Visualizm “is by far our best-seller” and is sold at high-end, sophisticated furnishings boutiques like Klaus in Toronto, Propeller in San Francisco and ABC Home in New York.

Not bad for two guys who have no for-

mal design training. Before starting IZM six years ago, Mack and his partner, Shane Pawluk, were construction workers: Mack the pipefitter and Pawluk the concrete worker met on a job site in Cuba, of all places. Subsequently, Mack tutored under master furniture maker Ron Genge, while Pawluk learned woodworking while employed at a massage-table manufacturer.

The unit is available in four configurations: 14.5 or 18 inches tall and 70 or 90 inches wide, in oiled solid walnut or riftsawn white oak.

Designers: Jerad Mack and Shane Pawluk

Advertisers Index

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32 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2009

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Honourable Mentions

OFFICES

1

MMM Group Modo

Office in Toronto for an industry leader in engineering consulting services.

2

Stantec Guelph Office Stantec Architecture Ltd.

Space for a team of environmental scientists and landscape architects.

2 1

INSTITUTIONAL

3

The Jackman Humanities Institute Kohn Schnier Architects

University of Toronto Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

4

Jean-Lesage International Airport

3

Consortium d’architectes GPC (Gagnon, Letellier, Cyr / Provencher Roy + associés / Cardinal Hardy & associés) Transformation of Quebec City’s airport.

5

Richmond Speed Skating Oval Cannon Design

Multi-use building, including speed-skating venue for the 2010 Olympic Games, in Richmond, B.C.

5

4

RESIDENTIAL

6

Modern Metamorphosis Céline Interiors

Renovation of a postwar bungalow in Vancouver.

7

Private Residence

Mitchell Freedland Design Waterfront vacation home in Okanagan, B.C. 6

7

Fall 2009 Best of Canada CANADIAN INTERIORS 33

HOSPITALITY

Green Thai

J. Cho Design 8

Restaurant in Thornhill, Ont. 9

Jean-Lesage International Airport: VIP and Protocol Lounges

8

Consortium d’architectes GPC (Gagnon, Letellier, Cyr / Provencher Roy + associés / Cardinal Hardy & associés)

9

Two separate lounges in Quebec City’s airport.

Spring Rolls

Dialogue 38 10

Restaurant in Toronto.

10

MARKETING

Distillery District Clear Spirit Condominiums Marketing Centre Lobby Design

Chase International 11

Expansive marketing centre in Toronto.

11

Liberty Market Lofts Chapman Design Group

12

Model suite in Toronto.

Queen and Portland Model Suite

Kantelberg Design

12

13

A model one-bedroom unit in Toronto.

13

14

LANDSCAPE DESIGN

14

RETAIL

Imperial, Carrefour Laval

Lookout Pavilion Drew Mandel Design Pavilion on a ravine site in Toronto.

Ruscio Studio

Store for new fashion label in Laval, Que. 15

34 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2009

15

Š 2009 All Rights Reserved. Global Design Center 09.0304 Shown in Biscotti (BTW) and Mocha (MCW) with Silver Glimmer base (SGR).

thinkcontract

foundations series

iso14001 certified

FOUNDATIONS SERIES

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leed partnership program

sales & marketing 1.877.446.2251

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www.canadianinteriors.com

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