North Drive House | Reflect Architecture

— Reflect Architecture has completed an extensive interior renovation of Humber Valley House, a 5,600 sq ft. single-family home located on 2-acres in Toronto. The owners tasked Reflect Architecture principal Trevor Wallace with updating the property—one of the owners’ childhood homes—for a new era of family life. The resulting design successfully showcases the couple’s extensive contemporary art collection, while also tending to the needs of their young and growing family.

Following stints living abroad and in Toronto’s downtown, the owners were lured back to the family’s ravine-front property nearly six years ago. The house and its traditionally-inspired interiors, however, were misaligned with their tastes.

Completed in late 2023, the renovation explores and responds to a compelling architectural tension: the couple’s desire for an environment that successfully displays their extensive contemporary art collection, which includes works by the likes of Robert Mapplethorpe and Erik Madigan Heck, while simultaneously fulfilling the needs of their young family. The house is now defined by what Wallace refers to as a “playful sophistication”, balancing gallery-like spareness with moments of levity and surprise.

“The idea of living in a gallery was always important to the owners, but the critical distinction is that they didn’t want to live in a museum,” explains Wallace. “This is a family home above all; the owners have always imagined that their kids would one day look back on living here and think it was pretty cool that they were playing soccer or running around inside what felt like an art gallery.”

Reflect Architecture opted to maintain key elements of the house’s layout and circulation. Instead, Wallace and his team generally relied on considered material and colour choices, along with the use of form, to collaboratively realize the owners’ vision for the family home.

The house’s gallery-like ambitions are most apparent in select living spaces, hallways, and corridors. All-white walls evoke the simple spareness of contemporary gallery surfaces; doors and entryways are designed flush with adjacent walls—only interrupted by chunky blue Tom Dixon-designed door handles—to hide their function from view and redirect the viewer’s attention towards the house’s art.

The house rejects stiffness or self-seriousness through its playful use of shape and form. A highlight is the introduction of a sculptural white staircase in the building’s core. Riffing on the grand staircases of historic homes, Reflect Architecture’s design bucks both tradition and sterile minimalism with its uniquely jagged and stepped layering. (This underlying ethos of playful sophistication is further demonstrated by the house’s living room, which is occupied by a rippling, wave-like fireplace designed by Brooklyn-based Leyden Lewis.)

“We had a lot of fun exploring and playing with the staircase’s shapes and orientations,” says Wallace. “We wanted it to feel organic and fluid, and that required being playful. That was true for the entire house from start to finish; it was important that we didn’t take the whole thing too seriously.”

Cooking, eating, and family-focused spaces reject gallery-like spareness, instead using deep colours and considered detailing to establish warmth and intimacy. The house’s dining room, for example, contrasts the house’s all-white spaces with deep blue-green walls, mullioned windows, and a knotted light fixture by Lindsey Adelman, which hangs over the room’s large dining table.

The kitchen balances existing architecture with new interventions. Reflect Architecture introduced an Obumex kitchen with tone-on-tone travertine cabinetry and surfaces, including a new 15-foot kitchen island, while still preserving successful elements of previous renovations. An existing gabled skylight that washes the room in natural light has been maintained, with its copper beams now updated to complement the travertine.

At the kitchen’s far end, a large dining table designed by local furniture designer Mary Ratcliffe sits in the shade of a large Japanese maple tree in the backyard.

“This is among my favourite spaces in the whole house and it’s where we spend most of our time as a family,” says the owner. “It’s a sensational space with fantastic natural light, and I love how Trevor designed the kitchen to orient your focus to the greenery outside. When we sit here to eat meals as a family, it really feels like you’re eating in the backyard.”

Lead Architects: Trevor Wallace (Principal) and Elaine Welsher (Project Architect)

Photography: Doublespace Photography

Website: https://www.doublespacephoto.com/