Open house: an unassuming house in a Toronto suburb fronts an intricate spatial play of light and colour

Architectural Review, The, March, 2003

Seth Stein first drew international attention with design of his own house in London (AR October 996). Occupying an old builders' yard and absorbing some dilapidated Victorian stables, the house was conceived as a series of different but interlocking rooms around a secluded courtyard. Essentially Modernist in spirit, the composition was delicately interwoven with references to the Victorian origins of the site and English tradition, to the sequestered houses of more southerly latitudes, and Luis Barragan (whose work Stein much admires).

Something of that approach occurs in his recent house in Toronto. There is the manner in which the building is revealed by degrees as you move from the street to the entrance and inside, and the same kind of spatial interlocking and extension of the interior into exterior rooms. The deployment, in Barragan manner, of brilliantly coloured planes which was seen in the London house reappears here too, as does his appealing attachment to making concrete cylinders into cloakrooms and to brimming pools of water.

In Toronto, Stein has once again taken his cue from the site. This is long and narrow and slopes up from a forested ravine in a suburban area of the city. Seen from the street, the house is inscrutable, and in its graphic simplicity the building looks like a child's drawing. Two white cubes under pitched roofs are separated by a double-height wall of sand-blasted glass which incorporates the front door. To get to it, Stein leads you through two small courtyards -- the second of which contains water splashing over stones. Once inside (as in London), you must skirt the cylindrical cloakroom (the cylinder is carried down to basement level to become a steam room) to appreciate the full extent of the building which stretches out to the main living quarters and south wall of glass and aluminium. Beyond it is a cedar terrace and brimming pool at the edge of the ravine.

Inserted into the double-height space are four little abstractions of houses -- Stein calls them 'Shaker houses' to emphasize their archetypical character. They are supported on columns leaving a grand two-storey volume on the south, and a central aisle tracing the main axis of the house. Each of the houses, linked by a bridge across the aisle, has a bedroom (one has a small spiral stair to a secret space under the roof). Underneath, they shelter the kitchen, a study and a more intimate sitting area.

If volumetric juggling is one of Stein's great strengths as an architect, so is his manipulation of light. The double-height section between the elevated bedrooms is covered with a flat glass roof. This is shaded by an elegant brise-soleil ceiling that extends outside over the terrace and can be adjusted to admit stripes of light.

At basement level, which is principally taken over by children's activity, a lap pool bordered by planes of brilliant blue and red catches the light from a glazed slot overhead, and reflects it onto a dividing wall of frosted glass. Similarly, a granite slab submerged in a pool on the west terrace sends the rays of the evening sun rippling over interior walls. It is such details, revealing the architect's pleasure in playing with light and reflection, that add another dimension to the already intricately layered and interconnected design -- one that has been executed with supple intelligence and elegance.

RELATED ARTICLE: Architect

Seth Stein Architect, London

Photographer

Richard Bryant/Arcaid