It’s easy to slide eyes-first into a story about a remarkably beautiful and well-considered project. Go ahead, feast your eyes! (I’ll wait.) But architecture is always about problem-solving, and the challenges of a significant residential building, such as Downs House II, extend well beyond its initial construction and years of habitation, passing on to the next generation and complicating its future.
What happens when a significant, culturally important building—a celebrated and revered architect’s home (an Order of Canada laureate)—reaches the end of family ownership and is poised for the market? Imagine that, in the 25 years between design and market, property prices have skyrocketed, and there is clamoring demand for the ultra-desirable area of West Vancouver overlooking the Georgia Strait. Now, the “smart” investor will certainly want to tear down the 1,464-square-foot house on a spectacular parcel to maximize the property.
This is the plot (pun intended) that Trent Rodney shares with me. He and Jason Choi founded Vancouver-based West Coast Modern (“Architecture, Not Real Estate”) a decade ago, and, along with their team, are
currently trying to find a (very specific kind of) buyer for Barry Downs House II as it premieres on the market for the first time since it was built in 1979. With no foundational or governmental protective designation in sight, they are seeking a private buyer who would acquire and care for the property— not unlike a work of art—while recognizing it as a potential investment asset. This, in essence, has been the mission of West Coast Modern over the last ten years: to support an architectural heritage that is reaching a vulnerable status.
The unique architectural situation of Vancouver is written, in part, because “We’re a young city,” explains Trent. “Before Expo ‘86, there really wasn’t even much of a downtown.” Vancouver thus became a place for a generation of young architects to shape a more coherent vision of the city. For Barry Downs and others, the animating principle was nature, specifically a northwest coastal environment that blurred the harsher tenets of modernism. Parks are a vibrant part of Vancouver life: 250 parks make up 11% of Vancouver’s land mass. Hanging a hammock on that point, Trent tells me he travels with a portable one, so he’s always ready to rest
“It is a unique business model, built on passion and care—and on a pivotal, career-changing experience at a different address across the city, in the first home that Barry Downs built for his family”.
and enjoy nature in a park he happens to pass through (perhaps instead of visiting the urban-ubiquitous coffee shop).
Barry Downs began his practice with residential architecture and built his first family home in 1959 (listed on the Canadian Register in 2007). “It was very much then a house in the garden, a big room with a high ceiling, three sides of glass, and garden courts filled with plantings. There were seasonal delights we hadn’t expected at all, so that living, in a sense, in the garden was great. That was the beginning of thinking of landscape as really being a major part of architectural design” (“Cultivating an Organic Modernism,” John Goodman, North Star News, Apr. 19, 2015). As his civic architecture practice developed, Downs scaled that residential intimacy with nature to an urban scale. He was
involved in the design work—directly and indirectly—of numerous renovations and full constructions across Vancouver, especially those spaces most engaged with the community: North Vancouver Civic Centre (1974), Parkgate Civic Centre (1995-1999), Carnegie Community Centre Renovation (1980), Vancouver Convention Centre East/ Canada Place (1986), the Yaletown Roundhouse Neighbourhood (1993), Beatty Mews (1997), Vancouver Public Library Square (1995), and Vancouver Convention Centre West (2008).
Meanwhile, in the 1970s, others were clearing lots, prioritizing the efficiencies of unobstructed construction and maximized building footprints. But when Barry Downs began his second family house, Downs House II, he designed, as Trent puts
it, “a total love story to nature.” No trees were removed; instead, “cedar and glass volumes gracefully trace the site’s topography, cascading elegantly across forest canopy and rocky bluff” (westcoastmodern.ca). And although the rooms are small in square footage, they are expanded by interaction— both visual and actual—with the natural surroundings. This “borrowing” of the landscape is almost a sleight of hand (or of eye), a nearly seamless integration with nature: “When you step into the living room, you step out onto the water,” Trent says, then points out how Downs used reflected light to bring light into the home on the many gray days on this coastal perch.
Barry Downs was an architect whose design ideas still embrace Vancouverites every single day in how they live and roam throughout the city. Now, this house—both his home and his inventive, experimental architectural laboratory—is vulnerable. The clock is ticking at 4+ months on the market. Trent and Jason work against that clock, offering Downs House II as “A rare chance to steward a piece of west coast heritage.” They are seeking not just a sale, but a custodian.
It is a unique business model, built on passion and care—and on a pivotal, career-changing experience at a different address across the city, in the first home that Barry Downs built for his family. At the time, Trent was working in finance and, being civically engaged and arts-inclined, volunteered for the Vancouver Heritage Foundation tours. Although he embraced the arts in general, he was not especially interested in architecture. His volunteer assignment was to give tours at a house in Vancouver’s Dunbar neighborhood. Trent tells me what happened next: “About 700 people came through this humble, early example of a modern house—with its loose river rocks used as a hearth around the fireplace, exposed beams, and rough cedar wood. The common reaction was, ‘Is this house even finished?’ or ‘Where are the walls?’ I absolutely love this reaction. It gives me life to build a community of like-minded people who feel the same way about a ‘raw’ home—a home that responds to nature, to its site, and to those creative individuals who inhabit it, draw inspiration from it, and often play pivotal roles in shaping our city.” West Coast Modern is shouldering responsibility towards helping to build that community, one house at a time.
POSTSCRIPT
Between our visit to the house and this story’s publication, West Coast Modern has reduced the price of Downs House II. Acknowledging the continued vulnerability of these legacy homes in today’s real estate market, Trent continues to hope “this is the moment that Vancouver steps up and truly joins other world-class cities by preserving our landmark heritage home rather than seeing it redeveloped.”