smpl Design Studio’s update of an Oakville MCM landmark brings it into the 21st century, while preserving – in some cases, literally! – its roots.
Written by Martha Uniacke Breen | Photos by Ozimek Photography
Oakville residents with an eye for mid-century modern design may have already been aware of the broad-shouldered, circa-1960 brick bungalow set back on a wooded property on Lakeshore Road. Recently, smpl Design Studio was commissioned to bring the house into the 21st century, while maintaining the spirit of the original architect’s vision.
Founder Joel Tanner launched smpl in Hamilton in 2010, with the goal of bringing sustainability and practical, livable modern design to residential projects across Canada. smpl’s handpicked team of over 20 experienced designers, drafters, and permit specialists specializes in creating bespoke homes for their clients that often become landmarks in their own right. With this house, “Our firm did not only the full architectural design program but also the interior design,” Tanner explains.
Once the smpl team got to work on the Oakville bungalow, it quickly became apparent that more than an update was needed; not much could be saved intact. However, they made a point of carefully preserving what they could. One of the most notable examples of this, Tanner notes, was to reclaim, clean and restore the original brick; it plays a feature role, both indoors and out, throughout the house.
In fact, indoor/outdoor living and connectivity is one of the guiding principles of the new design. From almost every vantage point, the property’s mature vegetation is clearly visible, and even the landscaping is designed to work in harmony with the design of the house. Another important recurring theme is the use of a narrow material palette of cedar soffiting, black metal ACM panels, and light-toned concrete as well as brick and glass.
“We opted for radiant in-floor heating, with beautiful large tile slabs on the floor in most spaces,” he continues, “to pay homage to the concrete floors that were ever so popular in midcentury modern homes.” All the millwork is from Trevisana, a favoured Italian millwork firm smpl frequently works with. “[Their work] was delicately designed with function and aesthetics both at the top of the list,” says Tanner. These materials, with slight variations, add cohesiveness to the home’s expansive footprint; after all, at just under 8,800 sq.ft., this is not a small house.
The circular front driveway leads to a covered concrete patio under a dramatically swooped canopy, which extends from the garage at the left to the outer edge of a brick courtyard wall at the right. The wall is a recreation of the original home’s front wall, with its four vertical cutouts, and shelters a private courtyard that extends off the in-laws’ quarters.
In the centre of the canopy, to keep it from becoming too monolithic – or too dark – a unique lozenge-shaped opening called a “halo cut” casts sunlight onto a little garden directly below, perfectly positioned so that a small Japanese maple will eventually grow through it to the sunlight above.
Just past the courtyard is a comparatively understated front door, sheltered by a screen of vertical slats. This is another motif that repeats, in a variety of forms, through the interior. Just inside, another slatted screen – this time, narrow vertical strips of white oak – loosely separates the hall from the adjacent dining room. And further down, just where the kitchen meets the living room, the slats mutate into fluted, solid white oak panelling.
This is where another of the home’s parade of unique artistic flourishes appears: a conical, black-metal fireplace chimney, fabricated by CFD Custom Fireplace Design from smpl’s design, suspended over a circular hearth set in a low-slung black console. It’s absolutely functional; it’s also as cool-looking as an Apollo space capsule.
Glass walls, interior windows and skylights continually broaden views and light inside and out, and sometimes provide unexpected opportunities to connect with the woods outside. The TV room – a wonderfully relaxed space, furnished with slouchy sofas to lounge and watch the tube – features a pair of large interior windows that overlook the indoor pool (a rescue from the original design, updated with an infinity edge and a terrazzo-panelled water feature). The pool, in turn, has its own ceiling-height windows overlooking the trees.
Oakville bylaws protect established trees on wooded properties, but the smpl team were already adamant about respecting the old trees here, some of which are over 200 years old. However, it presented them with a puzzle of sorts when it came to the new addition that would become the primary wing, since excavating for an in-ground foundation would have damaged ancient roots.
“A project of this calibre always presents unique challenges,” explains Tony Vieira of Geometric Consulting + Management, who worked with smpl on the technical aspects of the renovation. “This is especially true when integrating modern structural elements with older structures. For example, the architects and engineers designed a 2,000-square-foot steel structure that had to be built around a 200-year-old tree.” Essentially, the solution they devised was to raise the whole structure about two feet above ground on low pylons, and connect it to the main space via a glassed-in bridge.
Landscape designer Meaghan Chabot of Meg + Kennedy notes that although all those big trees meant there were inevitably restrictions in what would grow, smpl’s approach to the design, both indoors and out, was a perfect jumping-off point for the work she and her team did.
“Joel did such an amazing job on the design, and I wanted to add on to it,” she says. “The circles in the driveway, for example, are continued in the plantings in the central bed, and we repeated the line of the halo cut in the front patio garden. And there are a lot of small pop-up places through the property,” including the little courtyard in the front, and a quiet meditation space near the primary wing, with an intricate, maze-like design constructed with pebbled pavers.
In places that were unsuited to live planting, Chabot adds, they “planted” with stone: for example, a stylized dry riverbed under the primary-wing bridge, an artistic alternative to mulch or pavers.
“Every square inch of the home has a design element to enjoy – including even the underside of the staircase to the basement rec room that features an indoor garden,” says Tanner. “It was always an intriguing house for people passing by; but here, we not only updated it but made the vegetation the main event. That’s what piques people’s imagination.”
