Hill House
Taking advantage of the home’s higher elevation, we lifted the roof pitch, added glazing throughout, and widened the main stairwell to let more natural light filter into every corner of this detached house.
Project description
Sitting several steps up and back from the street, our top-to-bottom rewrite of this High Park North residence imbues the home with warmth and serenity and opens it up to several new sources of daylight by effectively expanding the house from within.
The renovation entailed a full rebuild of the front porch as well as the dormer and bay windows; we also designed an addition at the rear of the house to create an expanded living room. Featuring warm oak millwork, a limestone fireplace, neutral furnishings, and oversized windows, the new living room is both a welcoming gathering space and soothing sanctuary. A custom bench sits just beneath new glazing that spans the north wall, making it the perfect spot for curling up with a book or gazing out at the swaying trees in the backyard. With two operable windows on either side of the mullions and an operable window on the west wall, the living room invites a lovely cross-breeze that helps to passively ventilate the main floor.
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Tasked with finding creative ways to delineate space in an otherwise open plan, we designed two “disappearing archways” on the main floor. Our reinterpretation of this classical architectural trope takes the apex of the curve and runs it flush with the ceiling so that it merges with the linear plane. These disappearing archways behave like proscenium arches, framing different programmatic zones — the living, kitchen, and dining areas — through visually intriguing transitions.
We widened the existing main stairwell and introduced a new skylight above it to bring light deep into the plan. On the top floor, we lifted the roof pitch and added two new skylights to create a luminous principal bedroom suite, with a walk-out deck.