High-end windows look onto an ancient oak at Pheasant Lane. At right, steps up and a dropped ceiling help separate rooms despite the open-plan design.
you can to make sure each of the spaces is adequately articulated,” he explains, “so when you’re in the living room, you don’t feel like you’re in the dining room, because of the architecture. So the living room steps up a bit and the ceiling comes down. And it protrudes from the envelope. We’ve got a very open plan, but the highly articulated spaces revolve around the specific function of each space.” To make the home seem firmly connected to property, Small’s design emphasized its “horizontality.” Those horizontal lines show up, for example, in windows hinging from the top and opening up from the bottom. Builder Joel Atkinson, a principal of Profile Custom Homes in Burlington and a frequent Small collaborator, points out that the high-end Kolbe VistaLuxe windows are designed for modern structures such as Pheasant Lane. “For a lot of years, there was not a nice, clean modern window on the market, so a lot of people were forced to make a more traditional window work or go to a commercial model, which has its drawbacks in a residential atmosphere,” Atkinson explains. “So Kolbe put a panel of designers and architects together and said, ‘OK, let’s design a window that meets the needs of a modern home but checks of all the efficiency boxes for residential applications.’” The minimalist, slim-framed VistaLuxe is designed for applications demanding large expanses of glass, such as Pheasant Lane, with clean lines, using durable steel on the outside and having the warmth of wood inside. To add to the effect of bringing the outside in, “one of the call-outs to modernist houses is to have the same range of materials both inside and out,” says Small. Any wood used inside is similar to the ohba.ca
colour of the exterior wood. Stone used on the exterior of the house can also be brought inside, as can its colour, used as a monochromatic element. “To get that long linear look, to hit the mark on David’s vision, we did a special order of Cascade Tiger Stones,” recalls Atkinson. “Usually those stones come in a blend, so it was a premium to get 80% or more at two-inch lengths, with some longer lengths thrown in to break things up [visually].” The home’s interior design was handled Goran Tijannic of Gogo Design, who, for example, sourced the magnificent marble slab for the fireplace, giving specific instructions on how it should be cut to best reveal its pattern. Tijannic also handled all the home’s intricate millwork through his Line to Line company. Atkinson particularly admires how Tijannic handled the bathroom, with its sculpted bathtub and curbless shower. “There is this really cool wall that is clad in Corian, creating a floating bench and niche for shampoo,” he says. “This separates the toilet room and the shower, with two full-height sidelights of frosted glass.” The builder likes the effect so much that he is creating the same detail in his own house. The entire 5,500-square-foot residence employs radiant heating with individual temperature controls in every room. As an added benefit, the concrete slabs used for the radiant heating make the house “feel more solid,” says Atkinson, with fewer floor vibrations and “great sound properties.” The house also features a ductless air conditioning system and a furnace that supplies supplemental heat when needed. “Where radiant heat is not good is when it’s 10C during the day and drops to minus-10 at night, because it it can take a full day for in-floor heating to react to temperature [change],” explains Atkinson. “So the furnace is there to help in spring and fall, when temperatures are fluctuating all over the map.” “Radiant heat has a nice inherent storage capacity, so even when the heat goes off, it still emits some warmth,” adds Small. “Besides, you feel more connected to the land when you don’t have hot air blowing at you.” OHB ONTARIO HOME BUILDER SUMMER 2019
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